Cherry Blosom Season

Well apparently it's that time of year, cherry blossom time doesn't mean a lot to me but if you are Japanese it's quite a big thing. They have Hanami party's which are basically parties under the cherry blossom trees or Sakura as they are called in Japan, which is a bit of a coincidence because where i am working is called Sakur city or "Skura shi" which probably means cherry blossom city i guess. Just Wikipidia'd Hanami, apparently it literally means flower viewing in Japan so there you go.

Anyway i was out in town Saturday up in Birdland and got invited to a Hanami party on Sunday in Utsunomiys central park, which was news to me cos i didn't even know there was a big park here, know where a couple of parks are but apparently they weren't the ones.

Had been meaning to check out this cherry blossom thing anyway and see what all the fuss is about, it's all the rage over here and people have been saying for what seems like ages that it'll soon be cherry blossom season and what am i doing. These Hanami parties are basically in the parks and under the cherry trees all over the place every town has one, from what i can gather they sort of bring in the spring, the rice planting season stuff like that. You'd think Japan would be the worlds biggest exporter of cherry's from the amount of cherry there are but these trees don't produce any Cherry's only flowers, cherry's are actually really expensive over here.

OK so back to Sunday and had to find my way up to the park which is on the other side of town from where i am, only directions I'd been given were Utsunomiya tower's there as well.

This really helped because not only did i not know where the park was i didn't know where the flaming tower was either. To be fair to everyone though on Saturday night we'd all been drinking and i probably said i did know where it was, the tower i was thinking of turned out to be a telephone mast, well it was sort of a tower just not the right tower, good cell phone reception though when i got near to it.

Finally found the place after a lot of walking good job it was a nice day, park was bigger than i expected and it was crammed with people, mostly sitting on blue tarpaulins spread out on the grass, bit like a really big family picnic. It was getting late in the after noon by the time i got there but it was still crammed with people the problem now would be to find the people i know, so i set about soing that.

Here's some photos, I'm off now for a beer and

something to eat, maybe even a chocolate banana you'll see what i mean from the photos.

Took the photo on the left on my way home, met up with the people i was looking for, took a bit of doing as there was so many people but finally managed it. All in all it was a good day or should i say late afternoon, everyone was enjoying them selves, just like a big family outing kids playing crickets eating drinking and the like and all under the cherry blossom trees what more can you ask for on a sunny day.