Hanami!

[holytoastr]

After 3 years of trying, I have finally gone to the Cherry Blossom Festival. I feel accomplished. And sunburned.

I almost went back home when we got the the train station and the line was out the station doors. Luckily it was the line to buy tickets, not get on the train. I'm so glad I didn't have to wait on that line.

The train was very crowded and full of children that did not know how to use their inside voice. Then when we tried to get off the train, the tourists at our stop were too stupid to realize that they needed to let people off before they could get on. Is that really such a hard concept?

Rob, Dani, and Kaylee met up with us. Together we went to the street festival. The festival looked really really neat. Too bad it was so crowded that I couldn't actually look at anything or do much shopping. I did manage to get a cute tare panda notepad though, and some amazingly well-priced hi-chew.

In addition to it be intensely crowded, it was also intensely windy. Tents were falling down! Weather reports say the winds got up to 20mph. Crazy!



We saw Nen Daiko, the local taiko group, which was the one performance at the festival I really really wanted to see. I'm glad we did. It was pretty neat. They did this song where they threw around a "ball" of sound. I wish they had brought bigger drums, but I bet that would have been very hard to set up and carry around as they went from stage to stage all day.

After checking out the street festival, we walked down to the tidal basin to see the cherry blossoms themselves. They were very pretty. But, just like the festival, it was intensely crowded.



We did eventually find a nice spot under the trees to enjoy the flowers. It was very peaceful, considering all the people around us. I felt very dramatic with the petals floating down around me. I was pleased.