Tales of the Traveling K

One of the most popular places for hanami is Kyoto. Within Kyoto, Maruyama park is one of the most popular hanami sites. Last weekend, some friends and I went to Kyoto for a day of cherry blossom viewing, and ended up at a night festival in Yasaka shrine and Maruyama park.

I began the day with Kristin and Kelly near Nanzen-ji. We walked down an out-of-use railroad, to a new pond with a waterfall.



Next up was the Philosopher's Path, which I walked with my mom 2 years ago, but when we came it was not the spring, so I had never seen it with the sakura in bloom. The entire walk is lined with sakura trees.


We then took the train back to Yasaka shrine, where we discovered a festival we didn't know would be happening. We got a whole lot of food, including candied strawberries, which were amazingly delicious. We followed the festivities into Maruyama park.

There we saw the lit-up cherry trees, found a few other Kansai Gaidai students, and had even more food! On our way home, we were lucky and saw two maiko dancing under the trees.

Posted by K. Raila at 4:58 AM Comments

Today I went with Yuko to meet her friends for hanami. Hanami is a Japanese event where people get together to see cherry blossoms and usually eat picnics under the cherry trees. It's still early in sakura season, so the trees were only about half covered in blossoms. I will hopefully be going again next weekend and will see the trees in full bloom.

We each brought some food. I made tuna sandwiches, Yuko and her sister Haruna brought chicken and salad, Yuka brought yaki soba, Haruka brought a dish she invented that involved konyaku and spice, and another girl (forgot her name, sadly) brought a rice, egg, and fish combination. Everything was really tasty!

When we were finished eating, we played cards, or as it's called in Japan, toronpu (from trump). I had a fun time talking about musicians and English pronunciation with Haruka. She said she wants to learn how to pronounce English properly, because it's usually hard for Japanese people. Her pronunciation was actually very good, though.

Posted by K. Raila at 6:29 AM Comments