For those that don’t know, “sakura” are the cherry blossoms that grace Japan every year. “Hanami” is a “flower viewing” which can be romantic but usually turns into a huge drunken party under the cherry blossoms far into the evening. And “Kyoto” is just some city in Japan. Alright, alright, Kyoto is a beautiful city full of culture that used to be Japan’s capital before Tokyo! But we’ll get to Kyoto later on…

Being an American, what amazes me about hanami is how people can reserve a spot in public place and people usually respect the reservation. Somebody will go to the park early and block off a section for their group with string and a note saying “reserved [this date] at [this time]“… and there usually isn’t any problem. Talk about courtesy! That’s like having nosebleed seats at a football game and not moving to the already reserved front row seats that are empty. In the U.S. after a while we’d move down to those awesome seats until the person who reserved those seats showed up, if ever.

Each person usually bring something to the party such as drinks, snacks, food, bento, and last year I made pizza at home and brought that . I always have fun at hanami parties because brings a mixture of friends together. Here’s a photo of a sakura tree in full bloom. For more pictures of the beautiful cherry blossoms and hanami action, check out Ben Does Japan where he goes to Kyoto to check things out.

A Friend's Chihuahua Loving the Sakura

Cherry blossom trees, or sakura (see more info at Wikipedia) look amazing and this year I got to experience them for the first time ever in my life!

I’ve seen some pictures of the trees, I heard they’re beautiful, I heard they’re romantic, I heard they’re magical, but I didn’t hear about the crazy drunken madness at night! We went to experience Hanami (flower viewing, enjoying tasty bento similar to this) at Ohori koen (means… Ohori park). I thought I was in for a romantic sakura viewing… but in fact… it was more of a fun time packed full of people, mostly drunk office workers, with some romantic moments in the quiet areas (near the temple).

The road to the park was lined up with vendors selling things from chocholate covered bananas to takoyoki (a grilled octopus dish). There were some families with kids running around having a good time and couples eating bento together, and then… there were tons of drunk people with sake, sho chu, and grills. Apparently the people under the trees brought tarps in advance and 1-2 people reserved their spot. Each cluster seemed to stay within their group of people which is good when family + drunk people are mixed.

We took some pictures but most of them ended up blurry and I took a lot of video which I haven’t taken off the camera. Here are a few of the decent pictures from that night.

If I had to sum up this experience in one sentance I’d say… it was like a tailgating party for the sakura football game. Ahh… good times, good times.

Tags: cherry blossoms, japanese cherry blossom trees, sakura