The sakura are out! My campus actually looks vaguely nice:
Saturday was apparently the best day for 花見(hanami), whose characters mean "flower" and "look". I was always confused by the concept of a national pastime of just going to look at flowers and say "oh, pretty". But apparently drinking sake is an important part of the ritual as well, and I suppose that's part of what keeps it fun. It was really amazing though to see so many people just out to enjoy the cherry blossoms. We went to Tsurumai Park, and there was a whole stand of cherry trees in bloom. Under the trees were blue tarps for people to sit on, but the space under the trees was seriously almost full of people.
Basically there are little food stands, then a street, then a stand of cherry trees with tarps and tons of people under them. We shared a tarp with a group of おじいちゃん (great way to describe Japanese old men, like "little grandfather") who kept offering us sake and snacks. They left their food and snacks with us too, as well as the bottle of water they'd been using to water down the sake for us.
Tonight (after a really nice meal - we had some really tasty fried rice-type dish with little fishes and pickles in it, which you take pieces of and put in seaweed like sushi; also some tasty soup with ham and egg and tofu) I learned all about how many things you can do wrong when eating in Japan. I knew most of the things-you-can-do-wrong-with-chopsticks, but I didn't know that you can't use them to pull something towards you nor can you use more than the last couple centimeters of the end, and I certainly did not know that each misdemeanor had a name. Although I guess I should have guessed. I'm sure my tea ceremony teacher knows all the names. My host mother was explaining that there used to be a "way of rice" the way tea ceremony is literally the "way of tea".
