Spring is... well, springing

Ok yes I know, two weeks. Bad, bad Doug. Shame on me. So new pics to see, this time from around Shichigahama. Now that the snowboard is away, I'll probably be going out to shoot pictures around town more often since I haven't as of yet. It's actually a lovely little town with some great scenery, so look forward to that. Also, my neighbor Jo just got back from New Zealand, so if you'd like to see a buttload of pics from the land of Mordor and sheep, click here. The blog's in French, but the pictures are bilingual. ;P

Now we're in the middle of hanami season here in Japan, which means that Spring has officially arrived. What little snow we had this year is slowly receding from it's mountainous perches to reveal... well ok, just a bunch of rocks, but rocks are cool too sometimes. More importantly though as it relates to this post flowers, and by correlation cherry blossoms, are starting to bud and bloom as nature shows signs of life all around.

Cherry blossoms only have a window of a little over a week where they're in full bloom, so everyone out here makes a huge deal out of them. They're treated as a national treasure, and not without reason. On the news, the weather is supplemented with a "sakura watch" telling you when to expect the cherry blossoms to bloom in your area and what stage the flowers are in (not yet, budding, in bloom, full bloom, gone!). The big thing to do this time of year is the hanami, which usually amounts to a picnic with plenty of friends and drinking on a tarp underneath the cherry blossoms.

Now the season has already come to close down in Tokyo but just about to spark up here... unfortunate considering I'm going down to Tokyo to visit people this weekend. The idea was to hit up hanamis in both locations, but I sort of missed the boat on that one I guess. I was planning on doing it anyway with whoever was down, but now I hear rain is in the forecast. Oh well. I'm hoping the blossoms will still be around when I get back as it'd be a shame to totally miss out. On the bright side of things, I'll be in Tokyo visiting people I don't get to see all that often, minus Mike, who probably has his nose buried deep in a manga out in Seoul right now because he's a nerd and had to stay and work instead of coming out to play with us. Boo work.

Oh, and apparently it was Easter this past weekend, which I totally forgot about. Happy Easter everyone, and while I'm at it happy belated birthday to both my parents! I'm sure though that you're progressively wishing people would just forget about birthdays now that you've both crossed to that other side of the hill. ;P