As I mentioned in the previous post, this year I had one of the most memorable sakura viewing ohanami experiences ever in Kamakura with my Hawaiian friend Aron. We had planned it from a week earlier and the weather was going to be okay however the day started raining. Still according to the weather forecast the rain was supposed to stop around lunch time so I thought "good" and didn't need to wear my gum boots "good".

We met in Kamakura just before lunch time but it was still raining. There was no way we could have a picnic up in the mountain where we were going to go so we decided to have lunch before we start our journey, or adventure more like. At this point I still thought that the rain will stop by the time we have eaten. Luckily I remembered this cafe called OXIMORON which I always wanted to check out but always forgot about when I went to Kamakura so there we went.



I didn't even know what kind of food they serve here, but it was a curry place. It was so nice. Beautiful space with great light coming in, even on a rainy day it was really lovely. Pity I didn't take a photo of the cafe space! The above photo is their little shop space at the front where they sell beautiful Japanese tablewares and zakka. The food was divine, I really enjoyed my curry with full of fresh herbs on top: coriander, mitsuba, shiso (ooba) and spring onion. DELICIOUS!

Tableware they use in this cafe was designed by one of my favourite porcelain artists Yumiko Iihoshi (I posted about her work and then shop here) and this series is named OXIMORON, the name of the cafe. I love this OXIMORON series so much and I always wanted to find out what this place is like which Yumiko Iihoshi made the series of tablewares for. So that was really great too.

It was still raining when we were leaving this place. Actually, it looked much worse. But anyway we kept on going as planned, to go on hiking in the pouring rain!
It was the Genjiyama Park we headed, where is known as one of the most beautiful and popular sakura spots around. Well, not on the day like this obviously.

But, it was worth it!


When we reached up on the mountain I received a notification on my phone.

Severe.Weather.Alert.

It was seriously raining, was probably the best and the worst day to come here, we laughed. Hahaha. We almost continued to take even more serious hiking course but we were not crazy enough to keep going and instead we decided to just head back the way we came down to the city.

I don't know how it happened (must have been my choice) but we then took the cute Enoden tram/train to nowhere and then walked back to Kamakura in. the. pouring. rain. along the beach.


We may have picked the worst day ever for all these but it was really fun. Thank you for the wonderful and crazy company Aron! Let's do this again! (NOT) hahaha, well on a nicer day.









So, the sakura cherry blossom season came about a week later than usual and is already going. I enjoyed it mostly in my neighbourhood there are some nice spots for sakura near where I live which are Himonya Park, Yutenji Temple, Nakameguro Canal, Rinshi no Mori Park, etc...

Nakameguro had always been my favourite to go see sakura for like 15 years, but it is getting so popular over the last few years and the crowd is quite overwhelming now. I mean it had always been popular there, but not like now. When I was coming home from Shibuya one weekday without realising I was getting off at Daikanyama (when sakura is around it's hard to go straight home!) and so I decided to walk home, when I got to Nakameguro it was so crazy that I could only walk one block along the canal and I just turned away from the sakura tree lined canal, got a take away cappuccino from Taste & Sense and kept on going. I am never good with the crowd. Of course t's still beautiful, but I much prefer enjoying it without so many people around like how I used to be able to before...like in this amazing year when they did not even put lanterns. I am living in the old days, in good memories....hahaha

The most memorable ohanami (sakura viewing) this year would have to be the Kamakura visit with my friend Aron. We went hiking in the mountain in the poring rain... Well, we could get away with the crowd for sure and it was a lot of fun anyway. I will post about our crazy ohanami trip to Kamakura later when I get my film developed soon!

The last photo is of me taken by Aron :)

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