Igirisu gin

Spring is celebrated by every country and relgion all over the world, (apart from places with no spring I guess), and Japan is no exception. Its a busy time of year; as the financial year ends there's an awful lot of paperwork to do, people transeferring (with no choice in the matter) to different areas of Japan and the start of a new school year.

So what better way to celebrate the coming of spring than hanami - from hana=flower and miru=to see. Its a tradition dating way back, originally its was ume (plum) blossoms that everyone went to see, but a while back the preference changed to sakura (cherry blossom). You can read a brief history here.

The modern form of hanami sounds like this: get out there early and bag yourself a spot, in busy areas there's incredible competition for places, traditionally reserved by placing a big blue plastic sheet on the ground and pinning it down with rocks. The family orientated version takes place in the day but the adults come out to play at night. There's an incredible amount of organisation that goes into some of these bashes, the guys next to us had brought a keg and gas cylinder...however they also seemed to lose most of their clothes too.

Anyway, there's very little viewing of flowers going on, take a BBQ and lots of drinks and then drink until the wee hours, ours looked like this:





There's more in the new hanami gallery



If the video doesn't work click here