Tales from the Punchbowl

Pictured left to right: Chris from California, Bertrend from France, and myself, Roscoe

We started the day around 2pm by picking up a large Chuhai and bento and headed towards the lake next to our hotel to enjoy the trees. While eating, Chris drew a characture (sp?) of me eating.  I'll have it uploaded tomorrow if the internet cooperates. After that we headed to the opposite side of the lake to where the festival was held, inside the grounds of a Shinto shrine.  The park itself might be similar to the size of Central Park and there certainly was a crowd there to compliment it.  It was sunday and the Sakuras just began a full bloom after all.  The music didn't actually begin till a few hours later so we headed to a nearby conbini to keep the flow moving.  I got an 8% "zero" lemon flavored chu-hai and a 100yen juice box packaged sake. Once back at the festival we sat under the trees at a table and dove in.  After I downed the chuhai, things began to pick up.  A group of friends around the age of 21-22 sitting next to us began a conversation and offered a bunch of KFC chicken as well as some squid jerky.  It was at that point one guy asked if we had heard about the North Korean missile launch.  発射しましたか？　ええ、発射しました。日本海に落ちました？　ええ。良かった。

Although initially invited for karaoke by the guy in the back with glasses, we eventually decided against it because of money and the fact that we didn't really need to leave a party for another party.  So, we went back to the stage area for more music.

This music really wasn't anything special if you already know what kinda of bands might play at one of these shindigs.  A noted exception however was a really good funk band that came on at dusk that pretty much got everyone on their feet.

This guy was with a family of 3 that seemed really cool.  They got our attention fairly quickly after we sat down and boy were we in for it.  They brought two gigantic bottles of sake with 4 square-wood cups.  Although we weren't even counting after a while, we must have chugged a minimum of 5 cups apiece before I was escorted by locked arms to more partying down under the trees.  The people down below were all in the 30s and friends of the original couple we were with.  I seriously thought the dude was gonna fall down the stairs.