Osaka Castle Ume (plum blossom)

Osaka castle is one of the more famous places in Japan to see Ume (japanese plum blossoms). there's a huge park at the bottom of the castle with heaps of different types of trees that will be in bloom over the next few weeks. Usually this time of year any parks that have any ume are full of old retired men with their thousands of dollars of camera gear and foreigners like me doing the sightseeing thing. I'm not really interested in flowers so not sure why i've been to so many places lately to see them but thought it was a good opportunity to get some different pictures of osaka castle.

I got to the castle around 8am and was greeted by an old man dressed as santa taking pictures of himself in front of the ume. I was suprised that there was only a few people there but was happy because i could take my time to get some pictures before the clouds came over.

santa having some "me" time away from mrs clause.

Osaka castle with some white ume in the foreground. I used
an sb600 for some foreground fill flash to get the nice blue sky
properly exposed. As they say a flash is best used in bright daylight.

It was strange to see an old man using a disposable camera.
It seems everyone over here owns an SLR camera. the hat is
pretty cool though. looks like a member of the MG club.

While i was walking around the lady on the right started talking
to me and asking question about where i'm from etc. After that she took
me for a walk and introduced me to the guy on the right. He's quite a
famous painter in Osaka and he showed me his photos with some famous
TV celebs for tv shows he's been on. here's a webpage with some of his
work http://www.geocities.jp/kumabati87/newpage13.htm. One thing
i'm really going to miss is how friendly old people are in Japan. sadly young
people seem to be as rude here as everywhere else in the world.

i think this bird is called meguro or something. Mika has told me a
few times but if it's not a pidgeon or seagull i can't remember the name.
anyway i like the colours and contrast here.

the castle from a different angle with pink
ume in the foreground.

some white ume but on a really cool tree with all the
branches draping to the ground.

this is how busy it was by about 11am. Photographers and
old women everywhere. Because i have a nikon camera often
old men will come and talk to me about cameras and point me in the
direction of good photo spots. It seems over here anyway not everyone
has switched to canon and a lot of the old guys are still shooting 35mm
or medium format.