Just got back from 3 nights in Seoul where they like a lot of spicey meat which was fine by me. Had a great time just pottering around the markets, buying the local speicalities, eating street food, bartering for ginseng, having weird tea and relaxing.

Here's a montage that explains it far better than I ever could.



If you look carefully you can notice there's "steamed subregion" on the menu. H says that underneath that the Japanese translation advertises a part of the human anatomy that you would never wish to eat. Korean writing has an alphabet but joins the "letters" up into something like Chinese characters. Interesting.

Bonus question: How many wigs can you spot?

My parents were visiting for two weeks. We showed and fed them everything! Highlights include Jetlagged Tsukiji fish market and lots of raw fish for breakfast, the magnificent Hakone Museum of sculpture with foot bath, just walking around and seeing lots of Japanese people, Kyoto lit up castle and Kiyomizu temple, Tea ceremony, tea ceremony lunch, Monk's vegetarian lunch while viewing gardens, Hiroshima, Building with 30 Omelette restaurants, Big Buddha at Nara, geisha dances, a scale model of Nikko temple, baths with my dad, staying in Yunoshimakan Ryokan in Gero where 2 emperors have stayed, open air baths looking over the valley or surrounded by gardens, seeing Fuji from Shinkansen, full sized Nikko temple, intercultural parental bonding and then eventually, on their last day we got to see some proper Sakura = cherry blossom.



Yes it's "Sakura" season where the whole country seems to turn pinky for a couple of weeks. Even though we had consulted the high tech cherry blossom forecasting web sites, we seemed to miss it all until the last day when it was a pink out. The temporary nature of the blossoms might make you reflect on the transient nature of beauty and existence itself and this goes some way to explaining the national obsession.

Some people like to just go around viewing it or taking a photo. Some, such as the youngest company employees, secure a spot under a tree by turning up perhaps 24 hours earlier and sleeping in the park. Then their colleagues turn up with the picnic, the booze, the slippers and the karaoke machine. Here is that kind of thing about to happen:



We didn't go that far but all in all it was a fantastic two weeks. It was especially great to see them get on so well with H and her parents who were so welcoming as always. We sent them away, last Saturday, tired but well fed and Japaned.



Typical scene of lavish food and PJ party.



Team salute.

They've come for me!



Actually it's the Okinawan anti-imperial-litter league. Having cleaned up Okinawa they've come to the imperial palace in Tokyo to see if they can find just one sweet wrapper left behind. That's more or less true.