糸島の花見 (Flower viewing in Itoshima)

When my family was on their way back to Finland, I went to Itoshima with my friend, her teacher in the volunteer Japanese class and the grandson of the teacher. The teacher had asked us to join her for hanami to see to cherry blossoms in Itoshima, a beautiful place west from Fukuoka. Even though I was a bit tired after the travelling week with my family, I was more than happy to join them because I got to do two things I had wanted to do: go for hanami and go to Itoshima. It took about one hour by car to go to a place where we bought bentos (Japanese lunch boxes with different ingredients) and saw a field of rape blossoms and when we happened to see a local train passing by it too, it reminded me of Ghibli movies.

From the bento bying place we continued a little bit more by car and ended up to an amazing nature area located uphills so that we could see the sea too. The place was so in the middle of the nature and we could walk in the forest of the hills, see some waterfalls and lots of flowers. I felt like I could just stay there the whole day or even move there. It surely was a movie scenery! After walking a bit around we relaxed under some cherry trees to enjoy our bentos and other food we had brought with us. The teacher was very nice and talkative and her grandson so cute and nice company too after he got used to the presence of new people. That place in Itoshima became my favorite place in Japan!

After Itoshima my week has been more peaceful when I have stayed mostly at the dormitory. On Friday we had an orientation at the dorm but it was basically just telling about the house rules again (after living over half a year here already). And after the orientation we had a welcoming party for the new students of our dorm and we got so delicious food again: onigiri, sushi, kara'age, fried potatoes, fresh fruits, cakes...

On Saturday I got a flashback to the time we came to Japan. After the winter and unexpectedly cold spring, it was not only warm outside but also the air moisture level was high. At least the cherry trees looks now very pretty. Yesterday evening I gave some salmiakki to two of my Asian friends. One of them had told me before that she doesn't dislike any food. Well, now she does.