Hanami

Friday, 31st March. My last day of freedom until, well, a week was the peak of the cherry blossom season. I was told that the rain would finish off the flowers before Thursday so it was important to see them while I still had the chance.

Ueno Park (in the top right corner of Tokyo, halfway around the Yamanote from Shibuya) is the best place for hanami – cherry blossom viewing parties.

The park itself was beautiful, with temples, pagodas and groups of Japanese people sitting on blankets beneath the cherry blossom just enjoying themselves.

There isn’t much to say, other than Steve, Eric, Maya, Kat and I had a lovely day, drinking sake, eating crepes and fresh fruit and just taking in the scenery. The only strange thing is that the Japanese would walk past the groups of other Japanese people and just smile, but when they saw us sitting there it was almost as if they couldn’t understand what we were doing; like sitting there was a strange concept. We got a lot of strange stares. Perhaps something was wrong about the way we were sitting, or the feng shui or something.

Again, click to enlarge:




There were stalls selling everything. Here is the weirdest and the nicest; guess which is which*:



The girls played a really bizarre goldfish game where you buy a rice paper net and catch as many fish as you can before the paper break. I should mention that rice paper and water don’t mix. Still, they won one:



And now for the cherry blossom:




My top three:



This is my desktop wallpaper. I love it:

*These are sour plums covered in coloured caramel and cooling down on ice. The caramel was amazing but sour doesn’t even begin to describe how bitter the fruit was. Bleurgh.