Snow!

Back to the present, and we have snow! Not just a light dusting like last week, but some real snow... I'd forgotten how cool it looks when it swirls around on tarmac, especially in car headlights. Snowboarding soon =)

On the way to Matsumae

This is where we stopped for some really ill-advised ramen...

Yay! 90kays and we're on the outskirts of Matsumae

mm. blossoms.

Hanami continued

So bright an early one morning, Blake and I headed off to Matsumae to do some cultural stuff. I was hungover, but it took us a while to realise his hangover was more like food poisoning from some dodgy jingis kaan consumed from the barbecue the night before...

90+ kays with diarrhoea is pretty hardcore.

A gorgeous ride though. If you're in any state to enjoy it.

Oh, you can't see his leggings here, but they were beautiful, I assure you.

Encounter on the road

This guy cracked me up - and didn't do any favours for Blake either...

The obligatory cultural comment:

These pix all took place during hanami, which literally means flower viewing, when all the cherry blossom trees in Japan bloom in a Northward-moving swathe across Japan. In Hakodate, where I'm fortunate enough to live, this coincides with a week-long national holiday.

So, it's one long week when *everyone* can cut loose and get wrecked in the beautiful parks under the pretense of being there to view the cherry blossoms - a truly beautiful time =)

It's quite possible to float from barbeque to barbeque all day and late into the night, if you're a waster like me, and a good time is had by all. Things to see: incredible clouds of white and pink cherry blossoms; semi-naked (the hat stayed on) sumo wrestling instigated by local students; a whole lot of jingis kaan; gaijin being stripped by suprisingly forward Japanese women (OK, maybe that's just me); impromptu shamisen, tanko and drum playing, and Japanese other than salarymen getting stinking drunk.


Right now winter is well under way, and although I'm looking forward to the snowboarding, I do hanker for the beautiful spring, and the 30C summer. Just a little.

mm

Welcome all, to this, my retrospective blog of my first year in Japan. I'll catch up sooner or later, but here's a few snapshots of life as a gaijin in a strange land...

How did she get it *off* in front of all these people?

...and how did she get it on *me*?

The results ain't pretty...

I still don't remember how all this happened. I know I wanted to pay my respects to this lass for wearing such a cool (read: revealing) dress, but how I ended up wearing it is lost in an alcoholic daze...