Friday, April 28, 2006

ohanami at toyano lagoon - 16 april 2006

Ahck! Walagata is down. Well, no longer providing free services, to be exact. Can't get my images back unless I pay. There goes all my blog pictures. But I managed to salvage the Japan pics from my laptop, and they're up again. Still looks messy though coz I didn't have time to edit the codes.



This post will be a short rough one as well, wanna put more pictures up. Taken about 2 Sundays ago, on a trip to the Toyano Lagoon with the Malaysian students of Niigata University.



As this is my first time being in a 4-season country, I was still not very used to the cold weather. This is one of the 2 coats I have with me. Thank God for nice ex-colleagues. Most of the stuff that I'm wearing are farewell gifts. They remind me of home.



Toyano Park, located next to the Big Swan which was one of the stadiums used for the last World Cup. Beautiful place. In fact, many places in Niigata are still untouched and their beauty preserved.



Japanese do the ohanami every spring. Picnics are a great way to just sit under the sakura tree and enjoy God's nature. Some say it's a good excuse to eat and drink sake. For me, these are great works of art.



Some play ball games with their family members. Some bring their pets along. I notice that pet dogs are really well taken care of here. Don't remember seeing pet cats here though. Maintenance is really high and you can see that they are pretty well-groomed.



The Malaysian undergrads doing the self-tug-o-war?



Pretty maidens in a row.



We did a stop over at a strawberry farm near the outskirts of Niigata city. During peak periods, you pay a certain amount to pluck and eat all the strawberries you can gather. Their strawberries are really delicious - no additional sugar necessary. Just pop them in your mouth and savour the pure joy of eating fruits in their original condition. Mm, make that semi-original...



And that was how I spent Easter.

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