Hanami Party

Trevor, Jason, Brendan, Mike, me and Nick

Last Sunday we had a Hanami Party. Hanami means flower watching (Hana=flower, mi=look) so we went to a park close by to have a barbecue under the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom so it really was a pretty sight except that none of the pictures came out because it was at night.
Hanami Parties are very common during this time of year. The Japanese tradition is to go to the park to admire the cherry blossoms while eating snacks and drinking "Shoshu" (Japanese Sake). This translates to a group of young drunken Japanese walking around. Nick spent most of the time talking to one of these young guys who was pretty drunk. His pants looked like they were going to come down at any moment. We don't know if he meant for the pants to be under his butt but at one point I just couldn't take it anymore so I asked Miki how to say "pull your pants up" and she told me to say "Pants agete". I yelled it out to him and it worked, he pulled his pants up and everyone clapped! By the way if you want to know what pants down is it's "pants sagete"...easy to remember.

Motomi and Miki having fun with Pringles

The whole time we were at the BBQ we were sitting on the comforter part of a futon. At the end of the picnic when everyone was packing up Trevor said that we were sitting on his futon. We couldn't believe he brought his actual sleeping futon....I thought it was an extra one!
What was even funnier was that he was carrying it all the way to the bar where we went afterwards. He looked like a homeless man.

It did come in handy later on that night when Jason (the head teacher at Nova) fell from his barstool at 'Playmate'. We put the futon behind his chair just in case he would fall again.

At 'Playmate' we did our usual karaoke. Late in the evening, Brendan chose to sing "Can't help falling in love with you" during which Nick actually volunteered to dance. As a reminder, that is our wedding song.