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Patrick met me after school and we walked back through the park again.  There is a Thai festival on this weekend in the boulevard near Yoyogi park, so there were hundreds more people about than usual.

I thought visiting a festival sounded like a fun idea, but once again was reminded that I despise crowds of people pointlessly milling about, getting in the way of each other, and eating dodgy food out of plastic take-away containers.

Eghh.

I don’t know why I always forget this.  Poor Patrick was a little confused by my having called him out to go to a festival then dragging him away from said festival as fast as possible.

The nearby activity meant that there were even more people in the park than ever this evening, adding to the friendly park feel.  I took lots of photos of the amazing crowded-park-atmosphere, only to find they were all awful, so the one above will have to convey the fun all by itself.

There is a rose garden near the entrance to the park, which I sat in to take photos today.  Unfortunately I embarrased Patrick for nothing as the only photo that turned out with the right light had a great big fly sitting in the middle.

Another popular park-passtime I didn’t mention yesterday is the drumming.  Each time I have walked through the park, there has been dozens of people hand drumming… or freestyle drumming (what is it called? I have no idea…  The sort of drumming that seems to be often done while wearing dreadlocks…)

Walks in the park are usually accompanied by the sound of these drums.  It does detract a little from the breezy-tree sounds but makes the walks all the more interesting. 

Today I was over the moon to find a lady walking her cat around the park on a leash.  Puss seemed to be enjoying himself immensely sniffing about in the grass and bushes.  I thought it looked quite a nice Saturday afternoon outing for a cat.

One thing that has been hanging about the last few days that isn’t quite so pleasant is the dead-thing smell.  It started on Wednesday and has been coming and going since.  I think it may be all the spring flowers that have fallen and are now rotting on the ground all over Tokyo.  It is starting to make me feel a little bit ill.

I walked to work this afternoon because it was such a nice day.  I have decided that my favourite sound in the entire world is the sound of the breeze rustling through trees.

It was very, very hard not to just sit myself down under a tree in the park and stay there for the afternoon.

Yoyogi park is always full of people engaging in all sorts of interesting activities.  There are the usual few people napping in the sun, but most people are hitting about a shuttlecock, tossing a ball or practicing some sort of dance routine.  There is also always at least two or three people sitting in the flowerbeds taking macro photographs of the flowers.

I don’t remember ever seeing so much activity going on in Melbourne parks, it makes it a really fun place to be.  Patrick and I need to go and buy ourselves some baseball gloves so we can throw our baseball around in Yoyogi park.

Life is too good here.  Only one of us need work, and only on a rather small schedule at that.  If we were more organised, I am sure we could arrange for both of us to work just a tiny bit and still be able to live here comfortably.  We are admittedly very bad at sticking to any sort of budget, so we do tend to spend more than we have, but that would happen no matter how much we were earning…  We will get better at budgeting eventually.

It makes me begin to wonder if life ever needs to really be any different.  Do we need to focus on work and property and investments for our future, or should we be satisfied to do as we please and arrange our work to suit?

There are plenty of people who would never have the option to do anything other than work too hard and live from paycheck to paycheck, who will never own a home or have any investment or financial security.  If these people don’t have the option of developing any sort of finacial security, why is it that we should base our own life around doing so?

There seem to be far too many interesting things to see and do and study in the world to spend so much time working, and then being tired from work.   

I guess the main incentive for the properties and investments and financial security is for supporting children… I don’t quite know how we will ever fit them into our nice lifestyle.

Maybe it is just a phase I am going through…

As I was so kind to accompany Patrick to the football bar last night, I thought it only fair that he take me out to the park this afternoon. The weather was perfect so we bought ourselves some sandwiches, pastries and fruit and went to have a picnic.We didn’t wake up until 1pm or so, so didn’t have much time in the park before it closed at 4pm. We have promised ourselves that next time the weather is nice we will go and read and nap in the park all day.