Finally, Pictures from Hirosaki

Well here are the last pics from our Golden Week Vacation! This was actually May 7th! Sooo sorry that it took sooooooo long to get these on the blog! This first pic was the first day we got to Hirosaki. It took us about 4 hours to drive there and about 1 hour to find our Inn! It was really crowded and confusing! Gabe and I got a chance to use our Japanese though so that was an adventure! Above is a picture of our first Hanami picnic.
This was outside a cute little store near the Inn that we stayed at.


After we had our Hanami picnic we checked into our Inn and had a beautiful dinner served to us in our room! It was really delicious and relaxing.

After dinner Dad and Siri went to bed (unfortunately they caught a cold while they were here). It was raining but Gabe and I had to go out for night time Hanami. In Hirosaki Park they light up all the cherry trees and people sit under them and enjoy food and drinks. Though we were not as prepared as this group, who set up a nice tarp tent and BBQ pit, (we just had Gabe's raincoat!) we still had a wonderful time!




Then the next day we finally had some sunshine!
The cherry blossoms were amazing and although the park was extremely crowded it was still peaceful and surprisingly quiet. This pic below is of Mt. Iwaki. It was kind of overcast so it is hard to appreciate the size of this mountain.

We toured the castle and then stopped to rest a bit and soak it all in. Hirosaki is famous for apples and they make a delicious local apple juice, so I had to try it! Yummy!

And here is Gabe finally getting to relax after all the driving he did all week.

After that we decided to try some food from the festival vendors!
These are miniature octopi! They were being used in Takoyaki! Which is a kind of breaded and fried octopus ball. Usually you just get pieces of octopus in them but here you got one whole octopus in each ball! Although it seems strange it was delicious!

Here's Dad Craft enjoying an octopus.

And these pics were taken just before we left. The blossoms had just started to fall into the moat around the castle. We went at the perfect time. We saw the flowers in full bloom and also got to see them falling on the last day! It really was a wonderful vacation and we had so much fun with Dad and Siri! Sometimes it takes having guests to really enjoy your own home!