HANAMI!!

Well I promised to try and write more often than the last three months, so here we go!  Fortunately, this last weekend was replete with news and noteworthy events.  The most notable of these was the arrival of Sakura Season!  Sakura means cherry blossoms, and they are something of a national treasure here in Japan.   

Now, as I wrote last week, the weather has been from ideal here in Tsu this spring.  Its been colder, windier, and rainier than normal, and many of my students were expecting Sakura Season to suffer accordingly.  This is a big deal for most people here, because almost every single one of my students had some sort of Hanami party to go to this week.  Hanami means to look at flowers, and a hanami party is something to behold.  Mie, and I'm sure Japan in general, has many many parks that are designed to be as beautiful as possible during Japan's two most beautiful natural events:  fall color season and hanami season.  

In Tsu, we are lucky to have Kairaku Koen (Kairaku Park).  It has made one earlier appearance in this blog, and is the location of most of our recent laser tag battles.  Unfortunately, we have been forced into a tentative ceasefire on the Kairaku battlefield because it has been taken over by the hanami vendors.  Every spring, parks all across Japan get filled up with food vendors, beer vendors, candy vendors and picnickers looking to buy stuff.  It is quite a sight to see, and see it we did.  A group of us headed over there saturday afternoon/evening to have a late picnic and hang out. 

Saturday afternoon was far from ideal hanami conditions, but we still had a pretty good evening, eating and drinking in the cold and blustery wind.  The next day was substantially better.  My friend Koya planned a big hanami shindig in Yokkaichi at a riverside park.  I made the trip to Yokkaichi with Sarah, Chinatsu and Ashanthi.  Few men have ever been blessed with such lovely companions.  However, my joy was short lived, as all three of my fellow travelers take great joy in making fun of me.  Sarcastic train rides aside, the morning was beautiful!  The weather couldn't have been better, or more different than the previous day's as you can see from the pictures.  

We got to the station, where we were picked up by Koya's friend and driven to the park.  I wouldn't usually make note of such a mundane detail, but Koya's friend drove a GMC Yukon.  It even had the steering wheel on the proper side of the car!  It was a nice change from the teeny tiny Japanese cars I've been riding around in for the last 10 months.  We got to the park pretty uneventfully and found about 25 people waiting for us!  Koya and co. had done a lot of prep work for this party and it showed in the food.  They had coolers of beer, coolers of food, a couple of grills, and were already cooking when we arrived.  We ate yakisoba (that is what is on the plate I am holding above: noodles, carrots, cabbage, onions, pork and squid) okonomiyaki, beer, hotdogs, and potato salad.  The closest thing I can equate it to is the 4th of July if instead of freedom and fireworks we're celebrating springtime and flowers.