All the Spring Flowers

Spring has been happening here in Japan since March, that’s when the plum blossoms began and the weather started to get warmer.

The first blossoms I saw were the plum blossoms in Osaka, when I was visiting with my Mom. I really loved the reds and pinks of those little flowers.

Then in April it was the Sakura – Cherry Blossom. I took a bike ride up to Hirose Park in Niihama and found a wonderful collection of cherry trees. I loved getting photos of the little white blossoms, as well as pictures of other flowers at the park.

I also did Hanabi (blossom viewing) with my JT Aki, her family, Bret and Angelina. It was nice to sit and enjoy some food under the cherry trees.

After the cherry blossoms fell with warmer weather and a few days of wind and rain, flowers began to sprout up and bloom all around Niihama and Shikoku.

Planted along the roadside in Niihama I found pink, white and red rhododendrons. As well as interesting tree blooms, petunias, peonies and other beautifully coloured flowers.

On my last day of Golden Week I took a trip to Takamatsu to visit Ritsurin Koen. A beautiful park filled with flowers and bright with the green of spring. I got to see the Wisteria and Iris and just experience a wonderful afternoon enjoying the sun and a nice walk.

Rainy Day at USJ – April 30th, 2013

The 29^th of April and the 3-5^th of May are Golden Week here in Japan. Golden Week is the time of year where are few different holidays occur following each other, so most people take the whole week off. So I was happy to have a nice beak from work for a week.

I decided that I was going to take a trip to Osaka to go to Universal Studios Japan. I invited my JT Yuko to come with me and she agreed. So on the 29^th of April we took the ferry across the Seto Inland Sea to Osaka. The ferry ride was ok, if not that comfortable for sleeping.

We arrived in Osaka at 6:30am on the 30^th and it was raining. I knew that there was a possibility that it could be raining, but that it would likely stop by noon. We waited on the boat until 8:30 and then caught a bus to USJ.

After getting into the park we both purchased ponchos to keep us dry, I picked the snoopy one and Yuko the Elmo.

We also picked up the fast pass, which was great for getting on the rides a little faster. It was really great for the Hollywood Dreams – Backdrop, because the line up was a 200-minute wait.

I also was able to meet Ernie, my favourite Sesame Street character. And Yuko's favourite cartoon the Pink Panther.

The rainy weather meant that there weren’t that many people at the park. The fast pass still came in handy, but we were able to go on all the rides at least 2 times without having to wait for too long.

Hollywood Dreams.

My favourite ride was the Hollywood Dreams roller coaster. They are currently doing a Backdrop, which is where the coaster goes backwards instead of forwards. I rode the ride 4 times, twice forwards and twice backwards. I also heard that had we come the day before they closed the Hollywood Dreams ride line at 11am because the line up was a 7-hour wait.

Still the scariest movie creature ever.

There are two rides that I had gone on when I visited Universal Studios Florida – they were the Jaws boat ride and the Back to the Future ride. All the others were different.

Heading into the Jurassic Park

After going on the rides, we also went to do some shopping. Well not a lot of shopping mostly just looking at the numerous stores and seeing the different movie labelled products, like food and treats.

Dino Bacon

Spider-MEN... playoff of the word ramen

Jaws Headband

An hour and a half before we had to go I decided to ride the roller coaster one last time. It was just as fun as it was all the other times, but then we had to run to catch the bus back to the ferry port to catch the ferry home. That was exhilarating.

Overall it was a great day at USJ and I had a lot of fun.