7th March, 2007
Food, food and more food. All I feel like I have been doing lately is eating. I have now had 3 hanami parties and have stuffed my face at every one. They have all been fantastic though. There was a festival at Himeji Castle (Kan-o-kai) so we got up early so that we could get a good seat because we knew that it would be packed. We arrived at the park a little after 9am. The weather was a little drizzly so there weren’t as many people around as I expected but as the day grew finer more and more people arrived (so I am glad that we got there early). We found ourself a spot and set up for the day. We had the best position, we were centre stage and right in front of the castle. You couldn’t get any better than having a beautiful view of the castle with cherry blossoms in front of it as well as being in the middle of the stage. We were very lucky.
The day was filled with all sorts of things happening – there were 100 koto players all dressed in kimonos to start with. That was amazing to watch and listen to. The koto is a musical instrument with a beautiful sound. I couldn’t believe that there were actually 100 of them all playing at once. After koto we watched some fan dancing, lion dancing and taiko(drums). Every section was amazing and brilliant. The whole festival finished at 4:30pm so it was a very long day. We even got to meet the mayor of Himeji. He came over to our tarp and sat down for 2 minutes – well just long enough to eat some Cadbury chocolate and have a photo before he was off again! There were lots of food stalls set up each with some different types of Japanese food and you could buy sake in a souvenir cup. People were all over the park having their own hanami parties enjoying the festival as well as the sakura.
My favourite part of the day were the drums. I thought they were absolutely amazing. The sound that came out of them was brilliant. I can’t get over how much beautiful culture Japan actually has.
Food, food and more food. All I feel like I have been doing lately is eating. I have now had 3 hanami parties and have stuffed my face at every one. They have all been fantastic though. There was a festival at Himeji Castle (Kan-o-kai) so we got up early so that we could get a good seat because we knew that it would be packed. We arrived at the park a little after 9am. The weather was a little drizzly so there weren’t as many people around as I expected but as the day grew finer more and more people arrived (so I am glad that we got there early). We found ourself a spot and set up for the day. We had the best position, we were centre stage and right in front of the castle. You couldn’t get any better than having a beautiful view of the castle with cherry blossoms in front of it as well as being in the middle of the stage. We were very lucky. 
The day was filled with all sorts of things happening – there were 100 koto players all dressed in kimonos to start with. That was amazing to watch and listen to. The koto is a musical instrument with a beautiful sound. I couldn’t believe that there were actually 100 of them all playing at once. After koto we watched some fan dancing, lion dancing and taiko(drums). Every section was amazing and brilliant. The whole festival finished at 4:30pm so it was a very long day. We even got to meet the mayor of Himeji. He came over to our tarp and sat down for 2 minutes – well just long enough to eat some Cadbury chocolate and have a photo before he was off again! There were lots of food stalls set up each with some different types of Japanese food and you could buy sake in a souvenir cup. People were all over the park having their own hanami parties enjoying the festival as well as the sakura. 
My favourite part of the day were the drums. I thought they were absolutely amazing. The sound that came out of them was brilliant. I can’t get over how much beautiful culture Japan actually has.
1 comment:
That was a great day. I loved just lazing around listening to good music and eating good food! This is the life!
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