Short timer ( again)

March 7 outing

This past weekend the group of women I teach English to on Wednesdays took me out to lunch, a farewell meal. Knowing that I'm not wild about meat they took me to a well know Hokaido crab restaurant. I was told the restaurant was more than 50 years old. It was in a large building with 4 or 5 floors of dinning areas. We too the elevator to the third floor and after taking off our shoes were shown to a cozy tatami room with a long low table all set with a variety of crab dishes. There were the usual warm towels to clean your hands, a pot of hot green tea and a heated pad under our feet to make us even more comfortable. Our purple and peach kimono clad waiteress was always coming in and out to take dishes away and bring more. The courses seemed to be endless, all crab based dishes and various seaweed dishes, with the exception of the green tea icecream for dissert. I arrived first with Kate and Kitty ( the American sounding names two of my students use in class and with foreigners) and the other students came one by one till the whole class was there and we began eating. The conversation wondered all over the place from what would I do after leaving Japan to what color my personality is. I was given a fairly detailed explanation of the four colors of personalities that are calculated by the numbers of your birthday... too bad mine is sort of a bogus date, but be that as it may, I was calculated to be a red ( aka) personality. The other colors are green, yellow and blue. We took some pictures of course and I took some of the food because the presentation is always so artistic and colorful.
After lunch the whole group went to see some early cherry trees that are blooming, as I will miss the real cherry blossom season, probably the most cherrished of all the seasonal festivals. The trees we saw were planned by volunteers and there are about 90 of them! Even though they had gone a bit past peak they were still very beautiful and if it had not been for a very stiff wind we would have enjoyed them longer, but we soon found it too cold and went near by to have tea. From the tea room we could see the river and the trees while enjoy the season's sweet "hanamidango". Three small mochi balls of different colors on a short stick. (see the pictures)

If there's one thing I've learned about going our with Japanese friends it's to expect to spend at least three or four hours and to be treated like royalty. It's a good thing that my bad Japanese keeps me contanstly humbled, ne?

Included with the pictures above are some taken in the class. Please click on the picture above to see them.