Ueno Park for the win!

I woke up late night and can’t go back to sleep so I am writing this post on a tiny iPhone, which is hard to write without typos, so I will be brief. Today was a gorgeous, warm day in Tokyo and we met some old friends there from our time in Ireland, as well as friends who had also been expats there. We met at the wonderful Ueno Park in downtown Tokyo Which was just packed with people celebrating the cherry blossoms:

The cherry blossom viewing tradition or ohanami (お花見) dates back from the old days of the Heian Court when nobles would have outings to view blossoms, play music and get drunk. As you can see the tradition has reached the masses largely unchanged, though with more beer and less poetry now.

Ueno Park itself was gorgeous, with Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines right in the park, but we spent our time at the zoo instead, which wad nice though cramped and kind of old. Fantastic food from the concession stands though. My little girl got to spend time with her friends from Ireland so that was a big treat for her.

The commute from wife’s home in Kawasaki was kind of long and after dinner and a shower we all collasped asleep by 7pm. :-p

Need to get some sleep as tommorow we’re going to a Children’s Buddhist service at Tsukiji Honganji in Tokyo. Hope I can take better pictures than I did in 2007.