Hanami Matsuri at Daishoji

Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season was quite recently, and for something as big as cherry blossoms in Japan, you really ought to head out one or more of the numerous places to go see blossoms, frequently with some kind of festival attached. This year we went to the town of Daishoji, about an hour's train ride outside of Kanazawa, to see their cherry trees and partake of their local cherry blossom festival (Hanami Matsuri).

It turned out that several dozen foreign teachers in the Kanazawa area had decided to go to this festival and we ran into a goodly handful on the train. We had a good time talking and just generally being not-Japanese together, and after we made it outside the city there were some startlingly good views of the mountains. Kanazawa is close to a range of pretty serious mountains but the view is frequently blocked by the foothills.

When we arrived some navigation was required to get from the station to the area of the town where the party was, but some other teachers knew what they were doing and we followed them. When we got there, we did find a whole bunch of really old, nice cherry trees hanging over a canal, and a small festival, along with a pretty interesting park area.

Old cherry trees over the canal

Riverside area with very slow boat rides available (we passed)

Park

The park had several water features of questionable aesthetic virtue, but they couldn't be called uninteresting

And that stuff is all great, but here's a Japanese kid with "APPLE BUTTER PANIC" written on his shirt

First we poked around a little bit to get our bearings, but we needed to eat, and went and got fried chicken and quasi-okonomiyaki fritters (sort of egg and veggie things) that were a little different than ones we've had before but still good. We ate under a bridge down by the canal to get out of the sun, get a little more peace and quiet (the Japanese children were feeling very rambunctious) and watch the blossoms float by on the stream.

After that, we looked around some more and found a nice shrine, an intermittent parade, and many further nice cherry blossoms.

Nice Shrine

Intermittent parade

More cherry blossoms

We then when back to the festival area for dessert - chocolate covered bananas and pineapples and more candied strawberries.

The chocolate covered pineapple was better than my expression might indicate

Following that, we went to the big lawn where most of the foreigners were hanging out on blankets having a hanami party, which is when a company takes all their employees to go hang out by cherry blossoms and drink beer. There were some good snacks going around (Homemade donuts? Yes, please!) and we spoke a lot of rapid-fire English and met a few foreigners we didn't know. The weather was close to perfect for most of the day but when it started getting cold we grabbed a train back to town rather than get caught outside with not enough clothing. All in all a very pleasant day. There are a few more pretty pictures of the blossoms over at Flickr.

Part of the foreign colony in the park