Blossoms, Ascetics, and Don't Pee Here

It's cherry blossom time. Yesterday we woke up early and drove to our local Lotus Park to catch some blooms.

There are the two guys standing on some planks. I yelled obscenely loud for them to turn and look my way. They're mumbling something about my sanity.

Here's a closeup of some blooms.

Then we had an early obento lunch.

Some fancy sweetmeats.

Walking around we came across this old man in his electric car. He was swerving quite a bit, ran into those bushes once. We cheered when he made it through those two cement knobby things. Ironically enough as we were driving away from the park and stopped at a red light, we saw him pulled over the side of the road surrounded by people. They were having him write down his name and number on a notepad. There was a bit of lecturing. By the looks of things he had run into someones car or bicycle or something. The light turned green so I couldn't shout my encouragement from the window.

Personally, however, I liked this dude best. He was some sort of ascetic out playing his shamisen.

Here you can see his prayer beads and patched up, incredibly ratty clothes.


J and I tossed some money into his box. Judging from the look he might have wanted paper money instead of coins.


And finally we come to the highlight of the day.

While I love Japan, I catch men peeing outside (on stop signs, on bushes, against fences, into small rivers, on small animals) at least three times a day. Further proof of this nasty habit was found at this small shrine.



The sign reads, "No Peeing". And it's not about animals either as that would be written entirely differently. Eyu.