Ohanami

Ohanami (literary means "flowers viewing") is Japanese traditional custom to enjoy watching the beauty of once-a-year-and-only-for-less-than-a-week Sakura or Cherry blossoms in Spring. During this period parks with sakura trees are really crowded. Some people are enjoying sakura by only scrolling down the park, but traditionally people have picnic party under the blooming sakura trees. Picnic here also involves enormous amount of beer so drunk people is a normal view -and excotic (?!) view- under the trees.

Actually Sakura trees can be seen almost everywhere here, but people prefer to go to parks where there are a lot of sakura trees. I took this photo this afternoon at the nearest park from our house. I love the contrast view of sakura color and the clear blue sky color.



Hiro hates crowded places so we didn't go to famous cherry blossoms spot for hanami. He said that there would be tooooo many people that it would be difficult to walk, especially with a small kid. So today we went to Tetsugakudou park, about 15-20 minutes walking from our apartment for hanami. There are many people there having hanami but not as crowded as famous hanami park, lets say Ueno park or Imperial Garden.



This is the close up of sakura flowers.



I love this spot. I felt like being inside a house with sakura roof



There were small pond inside the park so we had our small "picnic" there.



This is a photo of sakura flowers with pond's water as a background



And here is the close up:



The last shot before we left the park, and just before my camera was out of battery :p



And this is our dinner tonight. The highlight was Takenoko Gohan or bamboo shoots rice, one of Japanese spring food specialty.



Served with Hiyayakko (soft tofu topped with katsuobushi and soy sauce), Renkon no Hasamiage (fried minched pork in sandwich style lotus root), Shirasu (baby sardines), and Nameko Miso Soup (kind of mushroom).