Sakura Season Begins!

The snowboarding season has come to an end for me, so now it’s time to move my attention to going sakura hunting! Decided to go to Maebashi Garden to do some hanami today. Had a lovely sleep in till 10:30am before waking up and heading out at 11:15 to have lunch with some ALT friends at this pasta & apple pie place I’ve been wanting to try out for some time. It was quite a fancy little restaurant, and we all got the pasta lunch set, which was ¥1800 for pasta, salad, soup, apple pie (which comes with ice cream) and your choice of coffee or tea. Everything was really good (as expected Takasaki really does do pasta very well!) and especially the apple pie was delicious! It was piping hot. We actually stayed there a long time just talking (11:30 till 14:00!) before heading out to Maebashi Garden. I picked up another ALT friend on the way there, and it was actually pretty busy! There were a lot of staff around helping to direct the flow of traffic and parking, but again, totally not as crowded as Tokyo. The gardens were lovely and there were a lot of sakura around! We chose a quieter spot (not as many sakura trees around) next to the fountain to relax at. Once it got a bit nearer to sunset we packed up our little area and walked over to where there were more trees, and discovered there was this gorgeous area with sakura trees over a very blue river with bridges! Took lots of photos there before going to the food stall area and getting some takoyaki and crepes. Had our snacks in the dark and enjoyed seeing the lit up lanterns and lit up sakura. After that we headed home.