Ueno Park Hanami

This weekend I honestly wanted to go down to Ueno to the museum. I felt like I needed to get out of Utsunomiya for a day or so, and I'm more cultural than this blog may imply. Also, the cherry blossoms are blooming in Tokyo, so I wanted to take a look at the scenery and the big party that it causes.

I got on the train, a little later than I planned, and 2 hours of slow train later, I got to Ueno station. Obviously, my first stop was the bathroom. As I walked out, I ran into a guy I know and his wife. They were apparently on the same train and had come to have a little hanami (flower-looking tailgate) party. I said maybe I'd run into them later. I walked another 20 yards and saw another guy I know and his girlfriend. The party had reached critical mass, so I got pulled in.

We walked into the park to look for somewhere to set up base camp. It really was very pretty, but I think there were more people than flowers. The crowd was crazy. I hear that people show up at least the night before for a decent spot, if not days before.
We walked past these guys, I knew I was in the right place. We'll get back to them later.

We found a tiny spot to set up. It looked like you aren't allowed to walk there, but we weren't first, plus, hey, I can't read the sign. We hunkered down behind a horse statue and under a tree that had a few too many birds for my comfort. To my left were some drunk businessmen in suits, to the right was a nice little homeless village. I drank my beers and watched to people for a while. One of the suits got pooped on. A little while later, another guy showed up, and we set out to brave the crowd and find a better place to sit. We didn't find one, but we got this nice, absolutely straight picture.

After we got back to base camp, and I at some yakisoba and meat-on-a-stick, I was ready to do some drunk wandering. I saw a guy in a panda suit in the distance and went to track him down for a picture. Before I got to him, I was distracted by the guys with the beer from earlier:

OK, so they don't want to upload my video. I'll try YouTube: Nope, Google video. Ok, 4th try.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6353692882071418879

I couldn't understand what they were saying, but this went on for at least half an hour while I watched. We decided they were some fraternity playing every one's favorite game, Drink and Puke.

Not long after that, everyone else decided to head back to Utsunomiya, but I still had the drunk wanderlust. I said goodbye and set off to make new friends. After walking along for a little while, I saw a guy in a Pikachu suit and a girl in a something else suit and decided to follow them for a little while. While they were posing for pictures, I spotted a couple of cute girls and asked them what the girl was supposed to be.

I talked to these girls for a while, focusing on girl A for what seemed like a good reason. Find out they're both nurses, 24 years old, etc. General small talk. After about 20 minutes, though, I found out she's engaged, so I suavely (I think) segued over to girl B. Turns out she's got a boyfriend, too. Sorry, I forgot their names. While I'm talking to these girls, this old guy joins in. He wants to be my friend. I had some camera problems (probably changed some setting without realizing it) so this is the only picture (and memory) I have of the last 2 hours before I went home. It's displays my state pretty well. Don't worry, I got my hat back.I'm about 100km North of Tokyo, and if my calculations are right, we should get the cherry blossoms this weekend or so. That means I'll get to re-do it all closer to home.