A little something.. From Claire: お花見　Ohanami: Sakura Appreciation Picnic Party

Friday, 4 April 2008

お花見　Ohanami: Sakura Appreciation Picnic Party

Its spring, and unsurprisingly, everyone has been waiting for sakuras to bloom. Basically the blooming of sakuras indicate the mark of spring. After waiting through the harsh months of winter, spring finally came to Hiroshima in the first week of April.. ITs one month later for Hokkaido though...

And, the most important about sakuras blooming is the sakura appreciation parties known as ohanami お花見.. We basically find a good spot under a sakura tree and have picnics, with food and most importantly, Sake... HEre, me and my 豚兄aka Tonkei aka Brother pig.. So here we are with our piggy post.. Ain't we cute? Hahaha..

So as an intern, I was given the honour of securing the sakura picnic spot since the parks with sakura trees would be overcrowded, especially on Fridays.. On this special Friday, we started securing the psot since 10am in the morning, under two sakura trees we chose... I spotted this funny poodle that I had to take photo with, but the dog is so shy it wouldn't stay still enough for me to hug...

As you can see on the bank on the other side of the aioi river 相生川 filled with sakura trees.. Thought the pink boat was more eye catching though..

When Tonkei came over to take over the securing of location, I had the chance to take a walk at the Peace Memorial Park, which had even more sakura trees.. And I managed to catch the Hiroshima Television recording for the weather forecast for the evening.. So I was lucky to catch a photo with the weather reporter..
Can you see the toy duck she is holding? It wearing a carps nip.. Carps is the name of Hiroshima's baseball team.. I will blog about baseball soon... I hope.. :X
This is the genbaku dome 原爆ドーム.. Basically the world's first A-bomb was dropped in the sky a few metres away from this building.. They rebuilt the entire hiroshima except this building to remember the sufferings from atomic bomb and the importance of peace...

Here is my piggy sibblings.. 豚兄と豚姉 Tonkei and tonshi.. And we're the 豚三人家族！！！(Butasannin kazoku) Apparently I couldn't get myself in the photo... haha.. but i love tonkei's shades... he looks so cool!!!!

Here are some of the other colleagues!!!

As you can see, we were all enjoying our big picnic!!!!

My favourite people are in this picture!!! Sakata-san on my left and Ookubo-san on my right!!!

You can see choon fei, william and ian in the background.. we're all from NTU!!! And some of my favourite people in Hiroshima, Sakata-san and Okubo-san aka Tat-chan!!!

A few sakura pictures I took... Enjoy!!!