Thursday was a really slack day, I just tidied up my apartment, played some games and headed out for dinner with Kazu. We were going to go into Himeji but Kazu met Nate and Miho at Ako station and decided to follow them to Minato-ya. We had a good dinner there with one of Nate's friends, Dillon. They all ran off quite early to catch trains back, but I headed up to Sai-on with Kazu. We talked crap with the boys there for a while there until the ever crazy Aya. Kazu had been telling me the truth when he said Aya was normally quite serious. As soon as she'd had one drink though, she was back to 'normal', hehe.

Friday was the first real day of hanami for me. I'd arranged to meet up with my friend Amanda to go to Okayama and maybe Kurashiki. There was a little bit of confusion about the best way to get to Okayama, so in the end I just told her to come down to Ako and we'd go from there. On the way she messaged me to suggest we go for coffee in Ako first, so I took her down to my favourite little coffee place, Ciel, near the castle. I discovered to my delight that they do an awesome French toast and coffee set. It's a little expensive, but the French toast is amazing.

After 'brunch', we tried to catch a train to Okayama and somehow ended up going the wrong way, haha. So we had to get off at Sakoshi, the next stop, and catch a train back to Banshu Ako. It was only a short wait then for a train to Okayama. While we were standing on the platform waiting, my gaijin sixth sense kicked in and I spun around to see a young woman in the train on the opposite platform lowering her keitai. I realised she'd been taking photos of Amanda and I, haha. I laughed at her, and she and her friend both made love heart symbols with their hands. It was very amusing. I waved my best 'don dake!' ("don't do that!") at them and they laughed before running off out of sight. Crazy, crazy people.

We finally got to Okayama and headed straight up to the magnificent garden, Koraku-en. The sakura grove there was in full bloom and it was fantastic. The sakura this year seems to be bigger and crisper than last year, so it's a real treat. We spent quite a while in the garden, wandering, talking and eating our (very late) lunch. We took a quick wander up to the castle after that, and then back towards the train station. At the train station I discovered a Jupiter, and gleefully ran around buying ridiculous amounts of gaijin food (Cadbury chocolate, Vegemite and so on). We decided against going to Kurashiki as it was already 6pm and getting dark, so just had dinner in Okayama instead at a great little kaiten sushi bar.

It was nearly 9pm by the time we got back to Ako. I just headed home and got some sleep, ready for the big day of hanami in Himeji on Saturday!