Griddable » Hanami

Hanami

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 in: News, Travel

Hanami is one of those Japanese traditions that help define a season. If you ask anyone here what activity they most strongly associate with Spring, it’s hanami. For some, this is the tradition of getting together with friends and family to celebrate the changing season under a pale pink canopy. For others, it’s the season for parking a carpet of tarps under the cherry trees so your club or company sempai can come the following day and get drunk under the blooming cherry trees. For most, it’s the season for getting drunk in the park under a pale pink canopy.

I managed to get quite a bit of Hanami done, starting with giving little Yume a walk near Mitaka. Later, I went to see the yozakura (night cherry blossoms) with Kaoru near her house. We then had big plans for hanami that weekend in Yoyogi park, and the following week I caught the tail end of the blossoms walking along the Edogawa river by the Waseda campus. The flowers were already starting to fall from the trees in a pink blizzard, choking the river below. You can’t help but appreciate that there’s an entire culture and holiday season built up around a single flower blossom that blooms and scatters in a matter of days.

For our Yoyogi plans, we had intended to meet up with Oda-kun and Aiko and some other Niji no Kai people in the park. The sunny weather forecast sealed our fate as we stepped off the train at Harajuku station and landed in a sea of humans shuffling for the stairs. The crowd was so thick it actually took about 10 minutes to move the 20 feet to get off the platform, plenty of time for several more trains to stop and release even more people into the crowd. Until that moment, even in the crowded 満員電車, I had never really thought of Tokyo as being crowded, but at that moment, I found myself suffering from intense agoraphobia (fear of crowds), trying to wish away the horde of people swarming around me. The crowd was unrelenting as it carried us toward Yoyogi park. We managed to find Maria, Brian and Okabe-kun on the cosplay bridge and swept them up into the crowd with us. In the park, my reception cut out and I was unable to get ahold of anyone from Niji no kai, so we were on our own. A detour to the conbini provided us with the sustenance (read: junk food and alcohol) necessary to truly appreciate traditional Japanese hanami. On the way back into the park, Kaoru’s friend Atsuko met up with us, and we set about finding a decent spot for Hanami.

The crowd had reserved all the space underneath the cherry blossoms, so we settled for the pine… blossoms. The trees were a good distance for slacklining, so I certainly wasn’t complaining. I came to play.

As usual, the slackline and yo-yo drew quite a crowd. We were near a walkway, so our antics on the line slowed foot traffic to a standstill, I jumped around a little bit, then gave everyone a mini lesson in the gospel of slack. It was a big hit among my friends, and a few of the passing crowd brave enough to give it a shot. Everyone asked if I was in a circus. Maybe I should look into that.

Mark showed up later in the day, and as I brought him back to our spot, the weather turned on us and it started to rain. We tore down our campsite and headed towards Shibuya for some dinner, and by some coincidence, came across a few guys actually slacklining right there on the sidewalk. They’d set up a Gibbon Jibline between two trees, setting the anchors at the base of the trees so the line lapped over the handrails surrounding the trees. I hadn’t seen a line set up that way, but I was excited when I saw it was a jibline. They asked if I wanted to try it out, and I jumped up excitedly. The line was wet, but it was definitely more springy than the classic kit Kazuya bought. The spring allowed for a more bouncy experience crossing the line, and I could see the potential there, although the conditions were less than perfect. My suspicions were confirmed when Brian got on the line and almost immediately his shoes slipped off the line and he headed backwards toward the Earth. I could feel the impact through my feet as the back of his head cracked on the pavement. We rushed to see if he was alright, and he immediately shot up to assure us he was ok. We told him to sit down and take a few minutes, and we hit up a conbini for some ice. We had to settle for a packet of ice cream to act as an ice pack for the sizable lump forming on the back of Brian’s head. I’ve had my fair share of concussions, so I kept him talking to make sure he wasn’t getting sleepy, and told him to get a wakeup call from someone he knows the next day.

We saw a Hub bus (a British double-decker painted with the Hub’s logo) driving through town, so we decided to get a drink. The Shibuya bar isn’t nearly as spacious as Takadanobaba, and the air was thick with the smell of smoke and upset-looking foreigners. I couldn’t tell if it was the soccer game on the TV or something else that had the people near us looking so upset, but I wasn’t feeling too curious, so we hurriedly finished our drinks and resurfaced to fresh air. The rain had let up so we walked happily down to the Marui to meet up with Brian’s friend from school. After the rendevous we decided to go to Denny’s for dinner, where I discovered a rather unusual menu item: Tomato Cheese Ramen… It tasted like a wet pizza.