花見と温泉(Flower Viewing and Hot Springs)

Towards the end of April the Japanese Cherry Blossoms bloom. During that time on the weekend people go to various places to look at the cherry blossoms. Most of the time it's a temple. The best part about 'hanami'(flower viewing)there's usually people setting up food stands near the temple so people can eat various types of Japanese fast food. My favorite of course is tako-yaki. They're little balls that have cooked octopus in the middle of them. They are topped with ginger, spicy mayo, and takoyaki sauce. In America, I tried some tako-yaki but it was a little different. One of the major differences is the texture. Here in Japan they're normally squishier. I like the squishier texture because everything just melts in your mouth while you chew on the octopus. Some of the other wonderful foods are yaki-tori(chicken pieces on a stick), bananas coated with chocolate or strawberry type shell, carmel pop-corn??, sometimes okonomiyaki, and ice cream. The Japanese cherry blossoms are worth seeing. They're amazingly beautiful and as quickly as they bloom they disappear. Now most of the cherry blossom trees have grown their green leaves and leaving most of the people in Japan wanting another chance to see their beauty.

One of my favorite new things in Japan is to go to a hot spring. They're very relaxing and you feel so clean after going to one. When you stay at one over night it's so cool. You're treated like royalty and all you have to worry about is relaxing. The first thing my friends and I did was we took a bath. The bad thing about hot springs for most Americans is you have to get naked. Naked naked. I quickly grabbed a small towel and covered my front. It was the first time I met one of my companions and we both just walked around bare assed. Before you can get into the hot springs you have to completely scrub your self down at a little shower. My friend I sat there and scrubbed away. He thought it would be less awkward if we talked so he started to talk to me while I was showering. After that we went to the bath. It's really cool there's an inside bath and an outside bath. We preferred going to the outside bath so we stayed out there. We just sat and talked out there for a good 4o minutes. It was pretty nice and relaxing. One thing I forgot to mention is that when you stay at a Onsen you're suppose to wear a japanese yukata. It's a night kimono. It's really comfortable. After that we were escorted to a room where we got fed a meal for a king. I didn't bring my Camera for this so I don't have a picture. It was a 8 course meal. It started off with some sushi, miso, rice, and pickled vegetables. Next the server came in and lit some candles under each of our pots. This type of meal is called shabu shabu. Basically you take various vegetables; mushrooms, cabbage, onions, and etc, let it boil in the pot for a while and eventually you throw in some thinly sliced pieces of beef into the pot. You pull out the beef after about a few seconds and you did it into a ginger and pepper type sauce. It had the right amount of zing for my mouth. Then we eat more rice that was cooked with various vegetables like bamboo shoots, carrots and something else I'm not to sure what it was. Finally we had desert that was a strawberry cake with some plum pudding with a very sweet plum in the middle. While you eat all this food you are served all the sake and beer you can drink. I down about two bottles of sake myself. While my friends decided to stick with beer. About two hours later our Japanese friend recommended that we go take another bath before going to sleep. When I woke up she recommended that we take another bath before eating breakfast. I've never felt so relaxed at one hotel in my life. It felt really really good. I totally recommend going to a hot spring and taking three baths for the day that your there.