Buds, Bees and Bands

Japan has started to seem very normal to me. I look at my life here and I say "Yup." Things seem fairly normal. This is good for me, because it means I am fairly well adjusted, but bad for you, my readers, because it means that some of the things I do seem normal to me even though they would be very interesting to you. For this, I appologize.

Well, lets get started. Last weekend I went to a plum forest to see the plum blossoms bloom.
And sure enough, they were beautiful. Although, on one side of the plum forest was a grove of bamboo. I really liked the bamboo. The plumbs were alright. I guess it's just that an entire forest of plums makes plums a little bit boring. Still, fun, and a must do at the end of winter in Japan.
Here is a hardy old tree at a shrine that I went to afterwards. Planted about 1000 years ago.
A neat little modern rock garden in Fujioka.
And the first silk factory in Japan. Quite famous in Gunma and about to become a World Heritage site. It was kind of neat. The tour guide was in a little bit of the rush, but the grounds were big and it was kind of fun to see brick work in Japan.
The cool part was the silk cocoons.
Afterwards, Yuri and I went to Takasaki station, bought edible bees and ate them. Edible bees are not bad, but there was nothing amazing about them.
The next day we went to Maebashi's new mall. There didn't seem to be any interesting stores, and it was packed with people. Give it a couple of months to cool down and I'll go back and check it out again.
Then we went to Brigg's (the ALT that teaches in the school next to mine) concert. He has been starting a band and this was the first show. This is the singer from the band before his. Their music was just screaming, and this blond guy was crazy or drunk, so in sum, it was quite odd.
Here is Brigg's band. On Friday his lead guitar player and singer broke his collar bone and ended up in the hospital. Brigg decided to go on anyway. He did a really good job making up for the lost member.
And after the concert Yuri and I went to Keyaki Walk again and ate at a shop where the gimmick was "all you can eat bread". Maybe this doesn't sound that exciting to someone in the United States, where you bread will be refilled as many times as you want (within reason), but in Japan, this is an exciting night out. I tried all the bread. The best was the Sunflower Bread.
Coming soon: Mom and Dad visit Kyoto!