This Saturday (19th) I went for some hanami with Kaku and Kyeong (the Korean girl who sits next to me at class and who I went to hanami with earlier). Kaku invited me earlier in the week but he couldn´t give me any exact information so I didn´t know how to prepare. When I phoned him the day before and asked if we should bring our own food and drink or if we were treated. He thought we might have to bring our own. I didn´t really understand who was going there except for me and Kaku and Kyeong, who I invited along, but hanami is always hanami... I was a bit worried that we would be no flowers to sit under since most sakura flowers had fallen weeks before, but when we got to Aka renga, the hanami-spot, there were still a lot of flowers. Apparenly there are a lot of different kinds of sakura and they don´t all bloom simultaneously. Aka renga means "Red bricks" and it is the name of a famous building. Around it is a small but beautiful park. The hanami took place under some trees there. It turned out to be some kind of free Japanese class and we got treated to food and drinks, so the gyoza I had bought was left in my bag all day. Anyway, we didn´t actually participate in any talking but instead we ate as much of the delicious food as we could. 

The weather was really weird that day. Before everyone arrived me and Kyeong went into the building for a look and as we strolled around I looked out and saw that the rain fell and made the asphalt outside wet. However, when we got out a few minutes later it was as dry as ever. For a minute I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. Then, as we sat under the trees and ate, thousands of sakura petals were falling and dancing in the air. It was so beautiful. There was a lot of petals on the ground so a couple of kids ran around and picked fistfuls of petals and threw them in the air over and over again. As there is a delay of a second or so when I take a picture with my camera I couldn´t get a good picture though. As there was a lot of falling petals they fell over us and the food too, so I ate a couple. No taste of course but kind of symbolic in some way... maybe. It felt right at that moment anyway. Then the rain suddenly began falling. And a lot of it too. Some people had brought umbrellas but one got pretty good protection from the trees branches anyway. It was beautiful and weird to see the petals keep on dancing in the heavy rain. I couldn´t do anything but laugh at the situation. Then the rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. Soon thereafter a couple of guards came and exlained that this was the grounds of Aka renga and not a park. No sitting under the trees. So we packed our things and went into the Aka renga building again and Kaku and I made our own interpretation of Gone With the Wind... Then we went for some karaoke...

As I wrote earlier, the Swedish artist Meja sang one of Hitomi Yaida´s songs in a tv-show. Now she has been in at least one of Yaida´s conserts too. I saw a newsclip where they sang I´m here saying nothing toghether.

There is a show called Denpa Shonen (electric youth) that is kind of interesting. It is one of the things hat makes Japanese television famous in other countries. Or rather, infamous. The most famous part of the show was some years ago when they locked a guy naked in a room where he had to perform certain tasks to get food and clothes. For some reason it seems he never got any clothes, and since they can´t show your sexual organs on tv in Japan he had a computer animated eggplant (nasu in Japanese) which he also got his name from. Most Japanese will know who nasu is if you ask them. I haven´t really figured out if they really are doing these things for real or if it is only acting for the camera but either way I think it is a weird form of entertainment. Especially if the people who watch and enjoy it think it is for real. Is it some kind of anti-empathy kick? Anyway, although the Nasu show is long since over, Denpa Shonen is still at it. Now they have a similar thing where an aspiring comedian is locked in a room and forced to learn Swahili for a trip to Nairobi where he will do an act in the language. He has about a month to learn the language and each day there are tests consisting of a someone coming in and asking him something in Swahili and if doesn´t answer correctly he don´t get food. Thee are a lot of different shows with a similar themes like one where a group of girls are asked questions about who in the group is ugliest, sleeps around the most etc. But these cruelties are not limited to this kind of shows. In all shows where comedians appear there is always some hitting on the heads of people who say something that they think is stupid or silly. Usually with the hand but some times they use tools like plastic hammers. I thought it was kind of funny in the beginning but since I realized that it is a frequent thing in all comic shows I feel a bit bothered watching it. Is it a part of the Japanese culture one should except, or is it just cruel?

I have more things to write as usual but I´ll try to remember it until later and just post this log immediately.