Stoat - Where?

I’ve been in bed for the last few days with flu or somesuch, so I wasn’t able to celebrate as much as I’d hoped. Despite my blocked sinuses and accompanying mountains of phlegm (sorry for the image), I did manage to stop by the cherry blossom party for a few hours and at least watch as others got silly on sake. And the gaijin weren’t the only ones. Usually after 9pm, my part of town shuts down and people go off to their beds. Gifu is after all, I’m told, a rural area of Japan (though, being a city of 500,000 people, you could’ve fooled me). Tonight was different, with loads of groups of people feasting away merrily late into the night.
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This week, the famed Japanese cherry blossom finally appeared and immediately went straight to the top of the “What everyone’s talking about” list. Because I live next to Gifu Park, I also went straight to the top of the “Jealous of where you live” list. This time of year certainly was the best for me last year. The days are warm but not too hot and the nights are cool and not too cold. I remember last year’s cherry blossom being quite vividly pink and this year they seem to be a lot more white, but maybe I just remagined it. Anyway, walking in the park is great and there are lots of people milling about with blankets, all with smiles on their faces.

This week, every man, woman, child and pet it seems, is off to find a beautiful, briefly flowering cherry blossom tree. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to sit underneath it and get well and truly drunk. Well, maybe not the pets. It’s a celebration of nature I think and if nothing else, the vomit will nourish the trees for next year. We plan a similar party on Sunday, when gaijin of many nationalities will descend on a park somewhere and ‘celebrate’ as much as we can.