Sakura Matsuri Festival 2013

So this weekend I had the pleasure of wandering around the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens with a friend at their Sakura Matsuri Festival, which was a combination of the annual cherry blossom festival plus lots of other Japanese cultural events–taiko drums, cosplay, origami workshops, Ukiyo-e artists, musical performances and more. The cherry blossoms themselves actually weren’t that impressive, as a lot of the trees have still not bloomed yet, but there were a few nice examples that were in bloom, such as this one below.

Sakura Matsuri Festival 2013

Cherry blossoms at the Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

The  day itself was really nice however, as you can see from the picture, and wandering around the grounds of the BBG is always a treat. And although I didn’t really get any good pictures, there was some amazing cosplay represented, from the basic to the extremely elaborate. In hindsight, I wished I would have taken pictures of the hundreds of great outfits I saw during the day. Fortunately other people got lots of great pictures, such as these.

Sakura Matsuri 2013

All in all it was a lot of fun, and wrapped up the day with dinner at Kenka, then a stroll through Fordbidden Planet NYC and Strand looking for vintage comic books, and other great things. I even managed to pick up the last 2 issues of The Massive, Brian Wood’s latest and greatest comic, and a special Cinefantastique collectors issue on zombies that included free 3-D glasses and a 3-D zombie pinup! Bonus.

cinefantastique zombies

You can see all of the pictures from the BBG, of which I think quite a few are pretty cool, below.

Until next time…love New York in the spring.

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