Perfect timing! The sakura blossoms for about a week, and I got to see the start of that week just before I left Tokyo last night. とえもきれいだね!　SOOOOOO beautiful!

I feel privileged to be in Japan at this time... :) I get to see the end of the week too, when I return to Tokyo on Tuesday, which some little old Japanese ladies I ran into said they preferred; when there are leaves and flowers on the trees...
And when I say ran into, I mean I was sitting around randomly and they invited me out to lunch and Ueno park (for the second time that day... Cheapskate story will have to wait till later ;)
Am up at the snow again this weekend and was having second thoughts on the bus up `is it going to be worth it? Should I have saved this $500 instead? Is the 1m hard snow going to be worth it?` But in getting off the bus it had just started snowing as I walked up to the hostel. SWWWEEETTT. It`s falling pretty heavily now, not much is staying on the ground,but I can`t wait to get up there after I check in this morning! (The overnight bus gets me here at about 5:30am).