No Maps for These Territories

For the full album go here.  Day 4 involves another Hanami outing, this time out in the boonies in Tachikawa, with Yuzo’s brother in law and his friends.  It was awesome to actually get to hang out with people who live in Japan and hear what it’s like, and experience hanami the way it’s supposed to be.  A bunch of drunk people under a cherry blossom tree.  But we started off the day with oden in our neighborhood…

Nom.

Cute oden place about a block from Minami-Senju

Heading back to the station to ride an hour into the wilderness.  And by wilderness I mean endless concrete jungle.

Grocery store along the way.

Animal hospital with big bay windows so you can watch them fixing pets?

Here we are at the festival!  The park out in Tachikawa is huge and spacious, full of fountains and trees and paths.  It took like 20 minutes to walk the length of it from the station.

Look at those cherry blossoms!

We finally reach our spot, and the tarp is already out and ready to go.

All this grub is home made, and fantastic.

All around us are falling petals in the wind.  Hard to capture on film how gorgeous it is.

Damn right a cup of happiness.  Thanks, one cup!

Range is very big.  And this girl is very small.

Chin ups on his big monkey arm!

Ah, racism in Japan.  Blackface is cute!

Is this not the world’s smallest beer?  I bought it and…

Gave it to Range.

Who proceeded to destroy the world.

Good times.

That is a girl drinking Asahi through a “duck mouth” made of Pringles.

Range gets a head band.

Hanging out in the train station.

Dude taking a nap on the train.  A serious nap.

Time for shabu shabu!  If you don’t know, that’s paper thin slices of meat, which you then boil in pots of flavored water.

Very cool shabu shabu pot.

Range likes the pork.

So does Yuzo.

Kevin goes into a happy coma from all the meat.

This is the rest of our crew.  Yuzo’s brother in law TJ and all his friends.

Aussie attack!

And we cap off the evening with a picture of the usual sign insanity.  Mini mini says goodnight to you all!