First Chilly Cherry Blossom Viewing (and chess) Party Of 2025

Ah, the cherry blossom viewing - aka "hanami" - season is upon us in Japan!

You know what that means? Sitting on a picnic blanket (or blue tarpaulin sheet) shivering your nuts off and trying to keep warm with some hot Irish coffee. That - the hot Irish coffee part - was my plan of action when I joined a gathering of chums by the river near the new Peace Wing football stadium in Hiroshima the other day...

I recently bought a rather fine looking stainless steel flask that came with a set of stainless steel cups so I thought I'd use that for my hot coffee supply. On my way to the river bank I stopped at Lawson's to fix the "Irish" part of the drink. Sadly, there were no small bottles of whiskey on offer and I ended up going for an el-cheapo 200ml plastic bottle of Jim Beam - much to the amusement of the assembled party of ne'er-do-wells by the river who were shivering over cold cans of beer.

What I pretty soon discovered was that the conductive quality of the stainless steel cup was such as to conduct away the heat of the coffee in short order, aided by the application of Jim Beam so that the best I could say of my beaverage was that it was luke warm provided I drank it down as soon as I had poured it.

Rather more successful was my chess set-up for this occasion. As it was a breezy day I decided to take my hefty "German Knight" plastic set and invest in a set of plastic clip pegs from Daiso to clamp the board onto the folding picnic table.

That worked a treat and three games were played during the course of the party, the first between myself and my challenger, Tony, which I won as black in spite of a difficult opening/early middle game. The second was between myself and Tony's wife, Kaori, who can play Shogi (Japanese chess) but had never played chess before. If you can play one of those games, you can quite quickly adapt to the other. I used the chess clock for that training game so that I could play with a time handicap - 2 minutes on my clock and 12 minutes on hers. Although she lost, Kaori was intrigued enough by the game to take on her husband, this time with no clock. In short, it was a good session as it introduced a new player to the game.

It was only towards the end of our hanami party that I realized that I hadn't actually looked at the cherry blossom since I'd been sat over the chess board with my back to the cherry trees that line the path that runs along the river bank. By the time I took the group photo with the cherry trees in the background, the clouds had closed in and the sun disappeared, giving the whole atmosphere as pallid a hue as that of the cherry blossom itself.

And so ended my first "cherry blossom viewing party" of the all too short hanami season.

Cheers!

David Hurley
#InspiredFocus

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