A Taste of Beer

Suntory The Sraight clocks in at 6% alcohol, a bit stronger than usual, but just behind Kirin's Strong Seven. The can claims "This 'koku & kire' taste cheers your mind." It doesn't really, but it's not bad.

Now to the テーマ of this little venture, flower viewing. Once a year, the cherry tree, a national symbol of Japan, comes into bloom and people flock to see it, but mostly I think they come to have picnics and be social. Luckily, I'm only a half hour from one of the top 100 sites in Japan for this, so I have some pictures that maybe you will like.


On the banks of the mighty Hii river, we find this gate telling us that there are cherry trees.

Here's the river itself, or maybe the Mitoya river. I took these pictures a while ago so I don't remember exactly what I was pointing my phone at.


I'm pretty sure this is the Mitoya river. They meet up, anyway. In the lower left hand corner, you can see me, or at least my thumb.


All down the right side you can see cherry trees in bloom.

And now the left side.

I ran into some people I knew and some people I didn't know, but being a foreigner in Japan gives you the opportunity to know tons of people you didn't know. Here's Chie-chan, who I met that day through some mutual friends.

One night of hanami ended with some live jazz. You can kind of make out a piano player, a guitar player, a drummer, and a bassist. They played a bunch of stuff, including "Take the A-Train," which is one of my favorites. And even better, then the fireworks started. It was kind of cold that night, but I got some hot chocolate from a vendor there who insisted on speaking to me in English.



The jazz was a lot better in person than captured by my cell phone.



Alas, the cherry blossoms have no doubt all fallen off the trees by now, but the temporary nature of them is what really makes them wonderful. 電光朝露

I had a six year old girl tell me she wanted to marry me the other day, and a bunch of girls who were probably seven or eight at most asked me if boys can marry boys and girls marry girls in America. I told them that they can in places (way to go Iowa and Vermont, by the way!), to which they responded with ii na-! which basically translates to "I'm jealous." Little kids are so weird.

Today I was at the entrance ceremony for the new first graders at one of my schools, and one of the kids kept making weird motions and stuff during the speeches and making weird "gah" type sounds while the kids were playing fruitsbasket. Everyone kept laughing because he was pretty hilarious, but I think it goes to show how weird it is to make kids that young sit through ceremonies that are usually over and hour long. Anyway, fun for me. It's back to real work starting Monday.