Spring in Tokyo

And I have two Hanami parties to go to this week: tomorrow and next Saturday.

Hanami? Ah - watching the most beloved Cherry Blossom (sakura) - subject of 1000's of Haiku's. Apparantly. And an uncountable number of hangovers...

In England, blossom on trees is something that just - happens. Here it is lauded. Celebrated. People have parties, with picnics under cherry trees. Everyone talks about it. It is BIG. And only lasts a week. They have cherry blossom forecasts here so nobody misses out.

One of my students philosophised that the Japanese worship the cherry blossom so much because cherry blossom is like the soul of a Japanese person.... or the life of a samurai. Then again, she may have been on the Sake, but given she's in her 60's and it was 1pm, I think not.

Oh and here's the site if anyone wants to track the Hanami: http://www.jma.go.jp/JMA_HP/jma/jma-eng/sakura/sakura.htm

Today I had a manically clumsy day. I can't blame PMS this time so I've no idea what's going on. I must have dropped a dozen things and nearly cycled into a couple of things too. Gah! I'm sure it provided amusement for other people though.

I have the last four episodes of series 3 of 24. The DVD shop doesn't have series 4. I donno, maybe it isn't out yet. But I'll miss it. It was fun while it lasted.

I went camera shopping this evening. There's a baffling array of compact digitals on the market. I panic when confronted with too much choice. I want something with more than 4 pixels that looks nice and is less than 30,000 yen preferably. Why are there so many damn cameras that fall into this range? This was my second unsuccessful attempt to buy one. Did anyone steal the decision making genes I should have been given at birth?

Oh, and I've decided that wearing both a mask and sunglasses - there IS no way to stop them steaming up. Not the safest condition to be cycling in but pedestrians are pretty good at getting out of the way of cyclists.

Kitty-san. I think I've mentioned before you can get pretty much everything Hello Kitty. Apart from adult sized chopsticks. We're talking ironing boards, stereos, toaster ovens, clothes, you name it. Welllllllllllllll, get this: http://www.hellocat78.1hwy.com/ - cute huh? LOL!

WARNING: You may get awkward questions if opening this in front of kids... ;-0