What’s Going On?

The Cherry Blossom Grand Parade was held this year on one of the warmest days that San Francisco has had this year thus far. The parade started in the early afternoon and lasted for about two hours. Meanwhile in the morning, there were tons to see and do. I eventually spent most of my time observing a few exhibits at the Hotel Kabuki. There I got to see some pretty awesome exhibits.

There were four main exhibits that were shown on Sunday and they were the origami exhibit, the bonsai tree exhibit, the paper doll exhibit, and the samurai sword exhibit. My favorite of the four was the paper dolls exhibit. Such great craftsmanship had gone into them that I felt like taking one home; however to my dismay, they were not for sale.

The Grand Parade featured a few local schools, local politicians and dignitaries, pageant contestants and queens, taiko drum troopes, other music groups, men and women from our local law enforcement, along with our fire department, and much much more. The finale of the parade was the highlight for most festival goers with two men whom are half naked on top of a sake keg carrying device who are being rocked side to side and men who toss sake into the air. It is said that the more the sake carrying device is rocked from side to side the more fortune it will bring.

Following the parade, the festival still kept going strong with their exhibits, bands hitting the stages once again, food vendors cooking up a storm, performances rocking the stage in Peace Plaza, and the festival finished off with an annual raffle where winners were pulled by the beautiful ladies of the Cherry Blossom Queens Program.

No plans for next year for two of the weekends in April, well make sure you pencil in a day at the Cherry Blossom Festival here in SF. It will not be disappointing, unless it rains of course.

Pictures of the holiday party can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.