peeps, they no likey them

three weeks ago my mom sent me a lovely easter package with some necessities (toothpaste with fluoride in it, face lotion, plenty of dark chocolate) as well as five whole packages of peeps. and i'm not talking about the packs of four, we're talking the bargain packs you find at sam's club...fifteen peeps per package for a whapping total of 75 peeps in my possession. may i preface this with a thank you to my mom for sending me that lovely package. but what was i to do with all these peeps?! i don't even like peeps. and so i decided to bring them to school and share the wonderfully cute little marshmallow chicks covered in chemicalized and colored sugar. however, i only brought four of the five packages. i was worried they might think i was desparate to get rid of these strange american peeps...and of course they'd be right.

i started out strong. whenever i was in the teachers' coffee room i would tell whoever was around to help themselves, "Dozo, tabete, dozo!--Please take and eat, please!" and it worked for the most part. then i realized the initial excitement reached a low point after 2/3 of one box was consumed. that's when i started to persuade teachers to eat them by strategically opening and placing the peeps in certain positions. i was going for the "look at me, i am all alone and so cute, eat me, you japanese teacher, you." this seemed to work too. then week two came around. my journal reads from these days "No one has eaten the peeps. What do I do? Do I bring them back home? Do i leave all three remaining packages here to sit and gather dust? Do i eat them all myself? Should i start setting them in random places around the school?"

finally after two weeks of more strategic placing and either eating one or throwing one away to make it look like 'people' were eating them and pulling them apart to make it easier to grab one, i admitted defeat. hey, i couldn't blame them, i don't like them either. on the final days they lived in the coffee room i decided to take their photos. they looked so serene, so peaceful. little did they know their fate was to end up in the japanese disposal system. poor little guys.

sakura time

for those of you who don't know what sakura means, it is cherry blossoms, and it marks the beginning of spring here in japan. and what a beautiful way to signify a beginning!

i went to tokyo this past sunday to hanami, "flower watch" (i'm not going to take credit for this one, isaac told me what it meant as he accompanied me to the big city).
we went to ueno park first and we were immediately struck by both the beauty of the trees and...the filth of the garbage underneath the trees. apparently, sakura not only means cherry blossom time, but also beer-drinking time as well as throw your trash everywhere time. notice the big pile down the main drag.

the best (ok, worst) was that it didn't smell like the sweet pungency of flowers, but instead like a beer burp. but not everywhere where the sakura exists allows such bingeful recreation. we happened upon another park in shinujku. according to the map it was the shinjuku goen, roughly translated "shinjuku park". makes sense.

it became apparent that this was the place to be hanami-ers, and since it was sunday there were a lot of kids running around, not being hanami-ers, but being cute and eager to stare at the stangeness of us. there are two very evident things about isaac and i that cause them to gape: his height, and my hair. it's a constant battle between being at a celebrity-like status to the smelly foreigner (don't sit next to them on trains) status. and one of the best things about being obviously foreign and lost in a big city like tokyo is that friendly japanese men come up and ask you if you need help. this happened three times in one day! it just puts your faith back in humanity when you experience kindness like that. i just hope that someday i can return the favor.
ok, back to sakura. do you remember in "bambi" when he gets his antlers all tangled up in the blossoms of the tree? well, we tried to re-inact this scene. personally i think isaac captured it more accurately.