Cherry Blossoms

I have many blogs to catch up on since Tokyo, which was back in March. I've been a slacker with this blog business, but I am determined to catch up. Kudos to the Australian teachers for motivating and inspiring me to blog more frequently. To the right of my blog in the "Other Japan Blogs" links section, I have all of their blogs listed, which they update weekly. They are “heaps cool", so you should check out their blogs as well.

When we were in Tokyo the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, so we were surprised when we returned to Himeji to find that the flowers hadn’t blossomed yet. They made their appearance the first week of April and lasted for about two weeks. We went to many “hanami” (flower viewing) parties, both day and night during that period. I think the cherry blossoms look like puffballs of pink cotton candy. Here are some pictures from just a couple of events.

Night Hanami - freezing but beautiful and lots of food

Hanami Festival - Masae & Tsutomu; Tottori City Mascot (Tottori is a Sister City of Himeji and is north of Himeji on the Japan Sea)

I'm next to the Mayor of Tottori, next to him is some guy who just randomly joined us for our photo shoot and next to him is the Mayor of Himeji, Tina, Lucy, Karen, Jodi, Chelsea, Marie and Lauren.

Lots of sake

Festival - Lion dance up a ladder; Taiko drumming with some of my Sugano JHS students

Beautiful Kyoko and John