Today I went hanami (flower-viewing) with friends from PSC (the Rotary Past Scholars' Club)! It was really fun! All the sakura (cherry blossoms) are in full-bloom now so we decided to go to the park near Osaka Castle to enjoy the flowers. Nakahara-san organized the whole thing and I really appreciated it!

I met up with Nakahara-san at Umeda Station, and we rode the train together to Osaka Castle and met up with Hebi in the station. The flowers in the park around the castle were really beautiful. There were a lot of people and the line to the ladies' room was really long!! There were a lot of food booths selling castellas and Osaka food. We all bought some food and met up with Nagira-san. We then headed over to the main park and Nakahara-san bought us all admission tickets. :)

We put out a plastic sheet and sat around and ate mochi snacks that Nakahara-san had brought. It was fun to sit outside and chat and to enjoy the nice weather. People around us were playing catch and badminton on the grass. Not long after, Ishida-san joined us too! I remembered her from a Rotary party in December.

For dinner, we all went to a fancy Chinese restaurant and had Cantonese food. I noticed that everything was at least 10 times more expensive than in Hong Kong or China...LOL. Spring rolls were really different from real Chinese spring rolls...Everything was pretty good though. I had a lot of lettuce + ground meat. The dumplings were also very good. We were joined by Hamasaki-san, who studied abroad in Brazil with Rotary many years ago. I had met him at the Rotary party in March too. During dinner, Hebi taught everyone how to fold chopstick holders with the paper chopstick wrapper that comes with disposable chopsticks. We also started folding napkins and wet towels...

After dinner, we went over to the bookstore as everyone was interested in origami books. :)We then wanted to go somewhere for dessert so that we could hang out and talk more, but the one nearby place in the Keihan Mall that was open was all full. So we decided to buy food and alcohol at a convenience store. We sat outside next to the river and the weather was great. Hamasaki-san mixed drinks for everyone. There were blends of Coke, milk tea, and coffee with whiskey and plum wine. I don't drink so I had tea and chocolates. (^_^)v It was fun to sit around and talk. After a while the lights around the building turned off. As a result it was really dark but the atmosphere was really nice.

At some point Nakahara-san was saying that Hebi looked like a person right out of "West Side Story"...and Hamasaki-san started talking about "Gekidan Tottemo Benri," a musical company. He is friends with the director of the musical company, Oono-san, because they went to school together! I was really excited because I really like that musical company and I have a lot of respect for that director. I had gone to see his recent production, "Complex," in Osaka in December. Hamasaki-san called up Oono-san on his cell phone and let me talk to him! I was so excited and kind of nervous to talk to Oono-san. I told him that I really liked his production and that I thought it was really well-written. I also told him that my mom from America and my sister also went to see it. I said, "I'm a big fan of Takane Fubuki...I'm really glad that I was able to see a show with her in it!" Oono-san said "Yes, she is great, isn't she? I'll tell her about this next time." He then asked me when I was leaving Japan and I said late July. Oono-san said, "You can come over to our show in Kyoto in June! and just say you are a friend of Oono-san and you can come backstage too." This is all too exciting for me. PSC and I are going to the theater in June!Wow. There really are a lot of cool people in Rotary. and cool people in Rotary know other cool people. What a small world!