Chili Blossoms and Fire Breathing Babies

On 3/27 after work we went to Roppongi Hills (a place in Roppongi) for their cherry blossom fair. It was mostly a food fair, but they did highlight a couple cherry blossoms trees by lighting them at night.

During our tour of Nikko our tour guide talked about chili brossoms trees. It wasn’t until later that we realized that she was talking about cherry blossoms, but we liked it so much that we have decided to call cherry blossoms, chili blossoms from here on out. On 3/28 (my before mentioned 30th B-Day) we went to Ueno Park to view the Sakura (cherry blossoms). Hanami (the viewing of cherry blossom trees) is very popular among the Japanese. We saw thousands of people at the park. Many of them were sitting under the trees in groups of 5-20 people, eating, drinking, and just enjoying the trees. There were lots of food stands selling everything from full fish that were smoked to cotton candy. It reminded me of a very well behaved and clean state fair. It was a ton of fun checking out the trees and eating. We ate squid balls, a gyro, some yakitori (meat on a stick), cotton candy, and sweet potatoe fries.

Cherry blossom trees bloom for only 5-12 days of the year. As it turned out the trees where only starting to bloom. It was very pretty but we are told that the next weekend would provide the best viewing.

After Ueno Park we went to Sumida Park to continue our tree viewing. Unfortunately the trees still have a lot of blooming to do there. The following day we went on a short cherry blossom tree walking tour put on by our apartment. It ended up at another cherry blossom fair near our home. Later we went to Ayoama Cemetery, which might sound like a weird place to view cherry blossoms, but as it turns out it is very pretty and quite popular with the locals.
Our last stop of the weekend was back to the Roppongi Hills fair. The main attraction was a 25 foot (or so) robot that had the face of a baby. It rocked out to music and blew fire from its mouth.