花見

This past weekend I spent doing....花見 Hanami!!!!! For those of you wondering, hanami is the Japanese tradition of cherry-blossom viewing. Which, of course, is code for "sit out in the park hopefully near some cherry blossoms, and have a big giant party with your friends." The party I went to was (if you remember) the annual bash hosted by Satoshi, who I met at that beer-tasting with Molly and Ben back at the beginning of break. And it really was a big party. It was at a park in Ichigaya, and probably close to a hundred people showed up. I went with Molly, Ben, Marshall, and Jason. Satoshi was there, in full form--black leather pants, orange shirt, bright-pink feather boa, and this sort of blue mesh cowboy-hat thing. Yeah. But it was lots of fun. I saw Rikako and Izumi again (who I'd met with Satoshi the first time), as well as make lots of new friends. And the weather was *perfect!* Here's a photo of some of the people I was hanging out with. The other gaijin, second to the left, is Zel; the one sitting to her right is my friend from before, Rikako; then Yukiko; and me. (I can't remember the name of the woman on the far left--oops. I'm bad with names). The party went on for a while--started at 11, though we got there around noon. The party broke up around 5pm, which is when we left, although Satoshi was taking numbers for an "after-party" at an izakaya nearby. LOL.
One last picture of the flowers! ^_^ Molly and everyone were meeting some other IUC-ers for Indian food and then the first drinking-in-the-park party of the year. But the reason I left was to meet up with a non-IUC friend (*gasp!*) to go to a bar in Jiyugaoka and play darts! XD My friend plays in competitions and stuff, so she was teaching me how to play. Darts became fairly popular in Japan a few years back, so there are actually lots of darts bars around the Tokyo/Yokohama area. It was lots of fun, and I caught on enough that after the first couple times, I wasn't missing the board anymore (lol). We stayed late enough that I missed my train, so my friend let me crash at her place--yay, sleepover!
So...I didn't get home til Sunday afternoon! >_<