Today we went on a day trip from Tokyo to the seaside town of Kamakura. The city is full of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. We hired bicycles on the train station and visited many traditional temples on this beautiful sunny spring day with lots of flowering cherry trees. It seems that we arrived just in time for the yearly famous Japanese cherry blossom. People actually told us that we are very lucky as the cherry blossom season – called “hanami” – starts a few weeks earlier than usual. Not only for tourists but also for the Japanese themselves “hanami” is a very special time of the year. You can see many Japanese taking photos of their cherry trees or having a picnic with sake below them. And it is beautiful! One can really feel that spring is arriving. The air is still cool, but in the sun it is already nice and warm. Accordingly, all (I mean all) Japanese girls and women are wearing short, short skirts (we were wondering about the skirt length in summer time..)

Generally, when we see Japanese people in public, we feel that they are quiet, but very strong and thorough people, also extremely nice and always polite and very helpful. Most people don’t speak a word of English, but still patiently and really patiently try to understand and help us! Arigato!