Pre-drinking-post-drinking: HANAMI '06
I must have inadvertently showed the Weather Gods my boobs. Finally, the clouds parted, the rains dried and we saw sunshine. Damn Spring rains. Saturday was a beautiful day for Hanami: a traditional Japanese picnic under cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are revered for their fragility and at best last only two weeks... when it rains buckets during their bloom, as in this case, they last less than one week. We more-or-less enjoyed our picnic under cherry trees and on-top of blossom petals. 
Understand that anything involving the words "Japanese" and "traditional" equate to intaking copious amounts of alcohol. So, Mom, the mid-afternoon drinking was not my fault and simply unavoidable. Actually, I limited myself to ONE bottle of wine over the 5-hour period as my 2-month semi-moratorium on drinking has significantly diminished my tolerance. My co-hanamiers (Tressa, Daichi, Drew, Anna & Dave) weren
't so diligent: we were taking the train home afterall. What you need to hanami: cherry blossoms, liquor, a blue tarp, lots of Japanese appies, some friends (or strangers), a guitar, some playing cards... We came prepared. And when we thought we didn't have enough of these things, we simply ran to the conbini (convenience store) around the corner or pulled up a seat along side some friendly strangers.
Our be-friending strangers started with a dare. The loser of our card game (Tressa) was forced to go introduce herself to a group of 8-10 fellow hanamiers and offer them biscuits (you know, life IS short...). To our disbelief, she had had enough to drink that there was no need for convincing; she simply walked over and chatted them up, which paved the way for our bombardment soon after.
Feeling rude that only Tressa had said hellos to our strangers (two of whom were gaijin), we all strolled over and were promplty asked to join their hanami. Good times ensued. Email addresses were exchanged. Hot Japanese boys were gawked at. Unlucky hanamiers were wink-
murdered. Ok, so the last one is a little confusing...We played a game where cards are randomly drawn and two of the crowd end up playing "murderers." They kill people by winking at them. The goal is to correctly identify the murder(s) before they wink at you. If you are winked at, you wait 5 seconds and then "die" in which case you say nothing to give away your murderer and are out of the game. Perhaps a little too much alcohol was consumed to follow these IMPOSSIBLE rules because halfway into the
game Tressa yelled:"HEY ANNA!! Did you just wink at me? Are you trying to MURDER me?!?!"
Um, Tress, honey, thanks for ruining the game!! HAHA
After stumbling back to Oyama station and catching the train back to Shimodate, we congregated at Tressa's for some post-drinking-pre-drinking. As it was Drew's birthday, a full
night of debauchery was promised. Dinner at our favourite ramen shop, Enya, was followed by karaoke at Dream (did I mention how much I LOVE living in town and walking to these fabulous haunts?) At karaoke we were joined by Drew's wife Jen, Jody, Chris, Yoko, Nori, and Dan. Later I was (we all were) suprised by Riccardo's turning up! What fun!Honestly, I haven't enjoyed a blissfully drunken night of karaoke with my dear friends in ages, but it was well worth the wait. Thanks everyone, for coming!
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