ALT in Shimosuwa, Japan: Cherry Blossom Extravaganza

I'm posting this today (Sunday) because I was too tired last night, but this post is really about yesterday (Saturday).

I thought it was going to be a relatively quiet, uninteresting day, but Brendan and his buddy Phil invited me to join them and Phil's wife to go look at cherry blossoms. We drove a little ways away from our apartment building to a walking path surrounded by blossoming trees. It was really beautiful to walk down. Excluding all the wind, the weather was basically perfect. :) We ended up walking to a small flea market alongside the lake. One friendly lady came up to talk to us and said that she had come all the way from Nagoya! (If you don't know where that is, it's about 112 miles SW of here.)

Next, we drove to Kamisuwa, the next city over from my town. It was very busy with people who were also enjoying the blossoms. We ate lunch at an Indian restaurant and I got chicken curry, which was really good. Afterwards we happened to walk by this place where there's a famous geyser (man-controlled) that shoots off about once or twice an hour. It was literally like 2 minutes before it was supposed to go off, so we went and checked it out. I took some video which I tried to post, but for some reason it didn't work. :/

Then we drove to a restored castle, Takashima Castle, which sits in a very beautiful park with many cherry trees. Lots of people were having picnics (called o-hanami) under the cherry blossoms. We paid 300 yen (~$3) to enter the castle and enjoyed a really nice view at the top.

It was a really busy day, and that's not even the end of it! After we got back, we ran into another apartment buddy, Amy, and she invited us over to eat and play card games. We ended up playing and visiting for over five hours!! It was a lot of fun, but today I have to make up for all that partying I did by cleaning my apartment and doing laundry. Haha.