Himeji hanami hangover hilarity

"We'll need to get the train at about 10 to get to Himeji on time", Lisa's message ominously warned in the wee hours of Saturday morning. This would probably have been a good time to go pay up and go home, but having another whiskey and bellowing out "Pretty Woman" seemed like a much better idea.

It wasn't. Or was it? By this stage, not even my hindsight could see straight.

For better or worse, I got home at about 3am, having finished a 3 course night of drinking and karaoke with the higher ups - breaking a previous record of 2. It's all in the name of international relations, y'see - this is how they do things here. Having said that, if I keep up this pace I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back in time. If I abruptly disappear and a thousand year old corpse is discovered, perfectly preserved with alcohol and salt, make sure to come by and pay your respects.

Despite a gorilla having jumped up and down on my head all night, we managed to make it out to Himeji with the help of Mr Coke Zero and Mrs Aspirin. The rest of Japan seemed to have the same idea, rushing out to visit Himeji Castle before it's boarded up for restoration until 2015. Thankfully that wasn't what we were there for and we breezed past the "40 minutes wait to get into Himeji Castle" signs (which I think were being very optimistic) towards the park. This wasn't exactly deserted either - nearly every horizontal piece of ground under the cherry trees had been staked out with a tarp with throngs of people lolled out over them at various stages of drunkenness. "Hanami" means "flower viewing" but the cherry blossoms actually have very little to do with it - the main idea is to drink and eat fried things on sticks until you can't see any more.

Eventually we managed to negotiate a piece of ground, laid out our tarp and pulled out our picnic lunch. Lisa had made a whole host of awfully impressive looking things while I had been out "celebrating", which we dug into in favour of the stalls of festival food that had been set up. I couldn't resist a fried fish stick thing but I wasn't nearly as tempted by the sake stand as everyone else seemed to be. I did end up having a couple of beers and a sake box but it was a ginger thing, like putting weight on a newly healed bone (and only under the protection of several eggs and a large amount of pasta salad). We met a couple of familiar faces while we were there, most notably Andy, with whom we spent a rather eventful year here way back when. We spent most of the afternoon eating (UFO catcher-won) chips, farting and making boob jokes. He wears no crown, but few doubt he is king.

Obviously having had enough of Japanese culture for the day, we had dinner at a Sri Lankan restaurant and then it was time to jump on the train back home. Sunburned, stuffed with snack food and head still feeling like a box of cornflakes, I was happy to flop into bed at a sensible time.  Strangely enough, of all the cherry blossom-related things we've done in the past couple of weeks, I think I enjoyed this one the least.  That's not to say it wasn't good - the blossoms were absolutely in full bloom, the weather was glorious and the company was great - but last weekend was a hard act to follow. That's clinched it - I enjoyed the zoo more than a piss-up in the park, I'm officially past it. Someone pass me a pair of cargo shorts and some leather sandals, let's get this over with.

Sunday was gloriously lazy, eventually seeing us surface to have a wander around the local area and enjoy the warmth outside. We went to the park and watched people fishing, had a coffee and cake in a local cafe you'd swear was straight out of the 1930s and finally managed to find our local Big Shopping Centre (very important). Everything we do here is interesting and I love that - rich veins of unusual and awesome things ripe for discovery. It certainly helps when you find the right places - the conveyer belt sushi restaurant there does hamburger patty sushi. You can't make this stuff up. You can, however, add it to the Mike and Lisa Tour of Kobe(tm), which is starting to get very impressive. We'll hopefully find something to add to it that isn't food related soon. Stop laughing, I'm serious.