Spring BBQing

May 2, 2015

This weekend marked the beginning of Golden Week in Japan. Some of you may remember this string of holidays from last year's blog entry. Well to refresh your memory, Golden Week is a string of Japanese holidays in the beginning of May. If you would like to know specifics feel free to Google it but all I knew was that it was off time from work! Many people during this time take big trips as it is a good amount of time off. But with money a bit low and big events coming up, I wasn't able to travel far. But it was ok because I had a few plans in Kansai I was looking forward to. One of those plans was a BBQ get together with some old and new friends. I had heard that BBQ is rather popular in Japan but I wondered if it was the same like back home. I'm from Texas so BBQing is a large part of Texan culture. I was interested to know if in Japan if would be the same.

I was feeling a bit sick on this weekend so it was a little difficult to be 100% but I didn't want a little cold to take over my string of days off. So on this Saturday I headed out to a part in Osaka to meet some of my friends. When I got to the park, there was an entrance fee to get in. That was a bit strange as parks are usually free. But when I saw the set up, I guessed it was for the space? Still strange. But the BBQ set up in Japan is basically people come to a large park with a big grassy area, and set up their tents and grills in their claimed space. I can see why my friends asked us to get there so early in the morning! The park seemed to be on a first come first serve basis so it made sense to be there early. When I met up with Rika, I saw that the group was about ten people, many of them I had never met before. The weather was really nice this day, sunny and a bit windy. It is currently Spring but you can feel the Summer heat creeping in already. It was fun to meet new faces and just hang out and eat food at leisure. The Japanese BBQ style seems to be like that, you set up camp, have chairs and games to play outdoors (like badminton or dodge ball) and cook through out the day having bites here and there. It is actually really similar to back home but we would usually have BBQs at people's houses. Having BBQs at parks is not uncommon though.

The day was really chill and relaxing. It was good to see old faces and meet new ones. The park, inconveniently so, closed at 5pm. So afterwards, our whole gang packed up our stuff and ventured to another park to continue hanging out. At the second park, everyone laid out a large tarp and just relaxed talking or having more beers. A friend also brought a badminton net and racket so we set that up to play as well. I'm not usually into sports at all but I really enjoyed badminton! And to my surprise I'm pretty good!!

With feeling not well, I called it a night around 10pm and headed back to my place. It was really fun to enjoy the great weather with good company though. First day of Golden Week, success!



xx
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