Japan!

Finally! Things have been pretty busy, and I've been having trouble getting my photos uploaded to flickr- i think there's a guy in Beijing who has to physically read every page and look at every photo before it goes to or from my computer. I picture him sitting in a little office with faded white cinderblock walls with nothing but a table with an old computer, a chair, and an ashtray. Even though the ashtray is next to his computer, he still takes a smoking break every half hour. I don't blame him, the room is kind of depressing. I just wish he'd approve my internet access a little faster sometimes, but he's got his own problems.

Rather than try and sum up Japan in one post, I'll break up the trip into some small adventures for your reading enjoyment over the next few days. My harsher critics feel like I haven't been going into enough detail in my recent posts (hi Leah!), so I'll try to be a little more focused.

As an introduction, I'll talk about the best part of Japan, spending time with Josh and Noah. We didn't get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked (due to email failures and busy schedules), but we did get to go to a Hanami Party with them. Hanami is a cherry blossom viewing party. Look at trees, hang out with friends, a little sake or shochu is involved... The Cherry Blossom trees are only in bloom one week out of the year, and so this is a very big event; and you can see why, many parks are blanketed in these beautiful pink flowers.