Hardly.
The cherry blossoms are in full bloom right now and that means one thing:
Hanami!
What’s that? As I understand it, it’s all about getting together with friends for picnics and togetherness under the trees. What’s it really about?
Drinking. And lots of it.
Not that anybody really denies that, but it’s never really used as one of the selling points. Except by some of the people I went with. “Bring lots to drink,” I was told. “Prepare for all sorts of drunkenness and debauchery,” I was told.
“We’re gonna puss out when the sun goes down,” I was not told.
In all fairness, the person who put the hanami together was as disappointed by the pussing out as I was. Things had kicked off at Yoyogi Park around 1, but due to a work even (Easter egg hunt) I wasn’t able to get there until nearly 5:30. “No prob,” I thought. I was told things would be going on until about midnight. I’m off Monday mornings, so that sounded cool to me.
Then it got dark.
A few of us (some gaijin, some not) were game to stay in the park and drink for a good while, but most of the J-folk in attendance bailed around 7. Weak. Steven (of TDR fame) and I were bummed that everybody was bailing, as that killed the momentum of the evening for the remainder of the people who were willing to stay.
Then the fuckers started saying it was cold.
Now, anybody who was in Tokyo yesterday can back me up on this. It was not fucking cold. Net even when the sun went down. Steven and I were in short sleeved shirts and weren’t feeling anything remotely close to cold. Granted, Steven had downed a fair bit of alcohol and I wasn’t horribly far behind him – but I don’t think that had any real effect on our perception of the temperature.
But they weren’t swayed by our pointing out that it wasn’t, in fact, the least bit cold. They were pussing out and wanted to leave, which would’ve left maybe 5 of us there to hang out. Our host wasn’t going for that, so she agreed that we should all head off somewhere together (somewhere indoors) for more drinking or whatever. Their destination happened to be the same bar I’d gone to (with the host and a friend of hers) the night before, so I wasn’t game for that. (Not that it was a bad place, just not where I was in the mood for.) Steven wasn’t up for it either, so we decided to go back to his place and drink on our own.Of course, that didn’t pan out either. While we were on the Yamanote, Steven’s vodka (and One Cup) kicked in and he said he was just going to crash. He got off at his stop and I stayed on to Ikebukuro, where I transferred to my train to go home. It pretty much was the end to the evening I’d expected, just earlier than I’d planned on. It’s all good, though. I got to see some people I hadn’t seen for a while, as well as meet some new ones. But it would’ve been nice to have a group that stuck to the original plan.
Ah well. There’s always next year! ^.^