Thursday, April 03, 2003

Hanami Part II Basho Tori means to reserve an area, but since it's a public park someone has to be there to hold a spot. April 1st is the beginning of the fiscal year for alot of companies in Japan. This is when positions are changed or new employees are welcomed. For many companies these new employees are used for Basho Tori since it coincides with the Hanami season. Here are some Basho Tori photos taken around 11am today. The third photos with the zabutons was taken around 5pm .. I guess right before the festivities. (click to see larger photos) Below are a couple of twilight Sakura photos at Yotsuya. I headed over to Inokashira park in Kichijoji after work w/ Shirley-chan .. it was beautiful there also. There's a lake with Sakura trees around it .. a ton of Hanami parties. As soon as you get near the park you can feel the energy. HANAMI ENERGY. Yatais (food carts/booths) selling beer, odango, and yakitori. The smell of burning Shoyu and the crowds. I had fun. There's a Hanami party on Saturday, but it might rain so it seems like today might have been the best day!?! I can't wait until the pedals start falling .. I heard it's like it's snowing under the Sakura trees. TANOSHIMI! (click to see larger photos) 11:09:56 PM    comment []

BlogShares "BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for weblogs...". Just setup my account and claimed my blog. You can setup an account without owning a blog. Had to post this link and image to claim ownership of my blog. 10:19:35 PM    comment []

HANAMI Monday, BA had it's Hanami party at the park I always pass on the way to work. I never knew those trees were Sakura trees! Look at the photos from my 3/28 post.  They're the same trees just 4 days before the photos below. (click to see larger photos) There were all kinds of parties at this park (it rained today, so no parties). BA's one had a Mahjong table setup. Some parties were really decked-out with lanterns and lighting to see the Sakura trees better. Another party had a huge Oden area in the middle of their area. Note: Someone's gotta go to the park early to save a spot. The Oden van (above photo) is not part of any party, but I guess knew alot of people would be at the park for Hanami .. kept going up and down the street with very iritating Enka songs. The Sakura will only last for a little over a week .. and since it's raining we might not have any more chances for HANAMI parties >(. Saturday .. hopefully Saturday's weather will be OK.  Just walking by the trees or seeing them from the Subway brings smiles .. cheeck to cheeck :) 3:31:05 AM    comment []

Blogrolling and the young "wiz-kid" I finally got around to adding the BlogRolling webservice to my blog. It's totally kewl. You create an account on their site .. create a BlogRoll, which is like bookmarks (or Favorites for you IE lovers) .. add blogs to the BlogRoll .. and plop in the code that calls their webservice into your blog. Everytime that someone updates their blog your BlogRoll shows some type of personally set notice. Joi Ito's blog mentions about a Uber-Genious "kid" .. Aaron Swartz. The reason this blog entry caught my attention is I saw Aaron at the WWW2002 in Honolulu. During the conference I wondered about Aaron. What is he like. I should have taken the chance to make conversation, but I was too happy meeting Tim Berners Lee and getting a photo with him. I think Aaron was the youngest guy there and I'm glad that I can now look at his blog to find out more about him. How are these posts related .. Aaron is co-author of RSS 1.0 spec .. BlogRolling uses RSS. That's kewl how things connect .. Totally LINKED!! 2:20:48 AM    comment []