Sakura day

After a long week of travelling, jetlag and ridiculous amounts of work I finally got some time off. Starting Friday night with enormous amounts of food at a Japanese restaurant were the food and drinks just kept coming. They even cooked some of the food on the table with a gas burner. Wouldn’t want to get to close to that one… After the restaurant we went to a club to show of our best dance moves. And then, the big finale, we did the most Japanese thing of them all: Karaoke. We got a private room and sang our hearts out! Really cool!! I think we were all quite surprised when we left the place that it was already 5.30 in the morning.. Despite the early hour there were so many people still walking the streets. This sure is a city that never sleeps.

After a beauty sleep of about 4 hours, me and Helena went sakura hunting. Sakura is the cherry blossom that happens this time of year in Japan. We spent a whole day all around Tokyo and she showed me all different kinds of places. Thanks again Helena for showing me around!! =)

First we took the subway to Ebisu and from there we walked along a canal with sakura along the whole canal on both sides. Really amazing! It’s almost like it’s too much to take it all in. For the Japanese sakura is like the happening of the year and all people gather around the trees and sit on blankets underneath to have picnics. It’s amazing to see how people of all ages do this togehter. We walked all the way from Ebisu to Shibuya where we took the subway to Yanaka. There we saw even more sakura and also a lot of small convents with old graveyards.

After this we went to Hibiya (at least I think it was…) and had some great sushi. It doesn’t matter where you buy the sushi here, it always tastes great. Even the cheap one’s in the supermarkets. With our bellies stuffed with sushi we continued to Ginza. A quite cool part of the city with lots of skyscrapers and neon lights. And for the rich people, fantastic shopping!

We finished the day with a cup of tea at a big oval building (don’t remember what it was though.. maybe should have checked with Helena before writing this..) with really incredible architecture. After a long day of walking it felt great to sit down for a while just relaxing and gossiping a bit.

Finally back in Roppongi I got out of the wrong exit from the subway and was really confused on what direction to go. But with the help of some European looking guy (the only kind of guy I would dare to ask..) I soon got on the right track back home.

I have uploaded insane amounts of pictures, and if you don’t like flowers you shouldn’t bother to look. =)