just another crowded Tuesday

I really hate being in crowds of people, so I often wonder what in the world I am doing in the most crowded country in the world. For the most part, I don't feel too crazy but every once in a while, I am faced with more people than I am comfortable with. It's a challenge to keep my cool and my patience. Last night was such a night. One of my students has been really excited to take me to a night display of cherry blossoms in Osaka for 3 weeks. After our class last night, we rode the train together into the city. We walked with the mob along the path and I tried to take a few pictures. The one nice thing I can say about Japanese mobs is they are polite. In my heart, I was grumbling and whining the entire time, but for the Japanese, this is a normal part of life on this tiny island with 127 million people. It makes sense why keeping harmony and peace is such a high value in this culture. You have to do something to keep your sanity! There were 3 paths where the trees were, but for some reason everyone wanted to walk down the same one in the middle. I dragged my friend over to one of the outside paths explaining "this is easier for walking." She didn't really seemed bothered by the crowd stepping on her feet and pushing at her back. In fact, she was one of the people doing these things! Oh well. It's another lesson in cultural difference.

There was an area for food (that's the video) and an area for the cherry trees. These blossoms are different from the ones I saw a couple weeks ago. Those blossoms have five petals. These look more like pom-poms and are called Yae-Zakura. The trees look like something from Dr. Seuss. Pretty incredible.





Some notes about the video:
*Notice how LOUD it is. The food vendors yell out "irrasshaimase" which is a welcome. You hear this A LOT in Japan.
*Did you see the guys shoes next to the platform thing those people were sitting on? Guess he didn't want to get his pants dirty.
*"Takoyaki" are balls of dough with cut up pieces of octopus in them. They're pretty good.