Springtime in Tokyo

So we're well into spring in Tokyo now, and some days it can be lovely and sunny with temperatures into the low 20s, but other times it's damp, cold and miserable. It actually snowed in Tokyo over the weekend. I don't think many people were aware of the snow because it fell in the middle of the night and was washed away by the rain which followed by the time morning came around, but snow it did. That's pretty much unheard of for Tokyo in April.


Spring in Japan means cherry blossom season and hanami, or getting boozed up under cherry trees, is a quintessential part of this. The missus and myself also did a bit of hanami in the local park a couple of weekends ago, but in our case we just had a few rice balls and pretzels from the local German bakery (they really do have everything in Kichijoji!) with some green tea. It was a bit chilly though so we soon left our picnic spot and went for a walk around the park. This brought us into contact with the downside of the public consumption of alcohol. We saw a middle aged guy throwing a young boy, about 10 I suppose, around the ground threatening to beat seven shades of shite out of him. No father of the year prizes there I thought, but then we soon realized that he didn't even know this kid! The kid's father came along then and tried to calm the situation down, but the drunken ogre started squaring up to him then! We moved quickly on before he decided to take exception to the foreigner!


Tokyo can throw up unexpected surprises sometimes. On Saturday, for example, we went to Shinjuku Gyoen, a big park in central Tokyo, for a wander around. While we were walking in the French garden we saw three ladies dressed as French maids posing for pictures. Nothing too strange about this actually, as you can see this sort of thing in the Harajuku district of Tokyo every weekend. But as we approached them we realised that these ladies were in fact fellas. Fair enough - certainly did remind me of Emily Howard though.


Another surprising thing this weekend was the discovery of a field of hens about an hour's walk along an old canal near here. I mean ok the odd vegetable patch here and there in suburban Tokyo is nothing exceptional, but seeing a field full of hens was most definitely a bit out of the ordinary. At the roadside there was a vending machine selling eggs from the aforementioned hens, and even though they were more than double the price of the factory farmed eggs in the supermarket, I couldn't resist and bought half a dozen. I made a scrumptious blue cheese and spinach omelet out of them!