#70 - Tokyo and Cherry blossoms - April 2013

The themed drinks from the scary restaurant.
Like a mad scientist's equipment.

In the first weekend of April, I visited Tokyo. I stayed at the apartment of someone from my initial training group, and I was very thankful to her! We met up with some other teachers from the same training group who lived and worked around the Tokyo area, and we spent the day touring Ueno park, Akihabara, Harajuku, Shibuya and Shinjuku. In the evening we went to a themed restaurant called the Lock Up. This was actually terrifying! The theme was basically to scare you, so the staff were dressed in masks and costumes. Every so often, all the lights would turn off in the building and UV lights would come on. The staff would then sneak around in full monster costumes and try to scare you to death! Luckily, this only happened once while we were there. We quickly ate and left! But it was definitely an interesting and fun experience!

 Around April it is cherry blossom season. So, on the next weekend I was able to have my first cherry blossom viewing party. This is known as 花見（はなみ ）hanami in Japanese. We went to a park in Sendai and laid down our blue tarp on the ground. Basically what happens in a hanami party is that you sit outside – preferably under or near a cherry tree – and eat and drink alcohol and have fun with a group. If I remember correctly, I think we arrived around midday, and we left the park around midnight. Some of the group got excruciatingly drunk, like the majority of people during cherry blossom viewing. Unfortunately, the peak for the blossoms were earlier in the week, so this was towards the end before they started to fall off more. Nevertheless, it was still a great party and very beautiful.