Sakata-san's Ohanami!!!! お花見

Thanks to Sakata-san's wonderful invitation to an Ohanami at Mitsubishi Heavy industries, Tat-chan and I spent a great Saturday afternoon having fun!!!

Mitsubishi Heavy industry is the second biggest industry here in Hiroshima.. Mazda is the biggest here... But Ohanami at Mitsubishi heavy industry is definitely mouch more different!
As you can see in the background, there are many more people having picnic here... And its much livelier!!!

This is Sakata-san's grandchild... Ain't he cute?? He pretty much just slept through the entire day though.. Haahahaa...

See? Like I said, Sakura appreciation here is so much more different... The lands are filled with more people!!!! This ain't a good photo of Sakuras though...

I finally had the honour of meeting Sakata-san's wife (奥さん= o-ku-san) Japanese can be really confusing though... We would call someone else's wife okusan (pronounced oak-san) but that person would call their own wife 妻　tsu-ma. But if you look at the 漢字, you would realise it makes sense since you wun say qi-zi in Chinese when you refer to someone else's wife... And you can see the big mitsubishi sign in the background!!! Look at this thumb... Tat-chan seriously needs to work on his photography skilld.. Sakata-san's wife is really energetic for her age though.. Can you believe she is already 61 years old? She is actually the table tennis champion for the 60 years old category... same for sakata-san... So they're the tabletennis champion couple.. 卓球恋人。。haha...

For some reason, mitsubishi's ohanami had people cooking food and giving it away for free!!! :P Wahahaha.. Here, we have some young man barbequeing oysters and giving it away for free!!! And I think the goggles is a really good idea for barbequeing!!!

Free Oysters!!!!! Help yourself!!!!

Sakata-san's grandchildren brought this toy 玩具(o-m0-cha) which is has a ball attached to this wooden toy you see Tat-chan holding.. you basically swing and let the ball land on the wooden handle's ball pit..

This looks like its gonna land successfully?

Here is Tat-chan, me and the Sakata Family!!!!

坂田さんお誘って頂きました！！！

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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!!!


Sakura Slide shows at:
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First week of April: Sakura season... Counting towards Ohanami...

After being treated by dearest Akiko-chan in the afternoon for lunch, I had the honour of a dinner treat from dearest SAkata-san. And We went for Kaiten sushi!!! 回転寿司!!! And it was my favourite kaiten ushi restaurant because I loved the hokkaido milk ice cream!!!!

This was mine!! I had the normal sized one and Sakata-san had the mini one.. This ice cream costs $4 sing!!! But if you think about it, isn't it the same as the Uzumaki ice cream in Bugis?
And after my lesson to Sakata-san in English, we went to a restaurant that opened till 11.00 to complete the lesson since the bread cafe we went closes at 9.00pm.. Most shops in Hiroshima close at 9pm, so its pretty difficult to find late opening shops..
And I had this special red sweet potato sesame balls! THis is the restaurant which we ate in.. The rare restaurant that opened to such late hours...
Returning home, I had to wash the dishes I stacked up over the past few days in my poor sink.. So I just turned on the tap and let the water flow.. Unknowingly, I created a water fountain!!! So I had to take picture of it!!! Usually, I dislike using flash in my photography.. But flash has a different impact on my water fall this time.. Look at this.. This made used of a flash, while
The one below here did not make use of any flash...
Next post! Ohanami!!!

First Week of April: The MaRk of Spring-Part 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 春春春=桜

Since April is here, it was the time of Spring!! Say さよなら(Sayonara) to Harsh winters and いらっしゃいませ(Irrashaimase) to Spring!!!!!

When its Spring, we can't miss out on Japan's famous beauties!!! Sakuras!!! The trees that were bald all through out winter has bloomed!!!!! Filled with Flowers!!!! Any idea what's so different about Sakuras compared to the other plants we have? Well, in Singapore, our trees are filled with leaves, but here, the sakuras whould fill the tree the way leaves fill our trees.. When Sakuras are about to wither, the leaves would grow and you would see the green sakura tree no different from our rain tree!!!

Since its Sakura season, many things sold in Japan were in Sakura flavour.. For example, Akiko-chan bought this wafer like cream pastry and she shared two pieces with me!!! And the cream was sakura flavoured!!!

I know it wasn't long ago I had a treat from my dearest Akiko-chan, but she's every so nice to treat me again... What did I do??? To deserve a friend like Akiko-chan?? Boy am I lucky! So we went to the newest restaurant in town called Yayoiken that serves Japanese meals at reasonable prices!!!
We were both attracted to the same set meal called ミックスとじ定食 (Mikkusu Toji Teishoku) Mikkusu means Mix actually.. Haha.. This meal is really good.. The claypot had mixed fried stuff like pork, shrimp and chicken swimming in 3/4 cooked eggs.. It was served with cold 絹豆腐kinu tofu(I really mean raw cold tofu), rice and mis soup! They're actually quite smart at not wasting rice.. To prevent people from wasting rice, they serve rice in small portions.. Small portions of rice? What about people like Kian Ping? Well, thankfully, there is free flow of extra helping of rice!! Now you can eat as much rice as you like, but this is definitely one barrel of rice that Kian Ping cannot finish!!!
The new shop has so many customers!!! But the food is good and reasonable!!!