Ok, two weekends ago! Friday Oct 27 I went to a festival in Nabari at a shrine. They were burning giant piles of sticks. Since it was a Shinto shrine, I’m pretty sure it has to do with cleansing and purifying. A procession came along with more flaming sticks, threw them into the bigger pile while a danjiri passed by. Here is a video of it.
There was a circle forming and we managed to get away from the skin-melting heat of the fires to a perfect position front and center for whatever performance was about to start. A guy put on a big dog mask and another guy got behind him under a cloth acting as his hind legs. I know it doesn’t really look like a dog, but I’m fairly sure it’s not a dragon and the way the performance went, I can pretty much guarantee it is a dog (Thank you Japanese theater class!). Here are some videos of the fierce dog dancing, and eventually being tamed by the guy in the red mask with the long nose:
Saturday morning I volunteered to do a little Halloween party in Aoyamacho. I dressed as a Ghostbuster, and helped do Pin-the-tail-on-the-black-cat. Here are some pictures of activities, card making, and girls dancing to “Thriller”.
Last Friday was a holiday, no school! Nintendo was holding a FREE Wii & DS expo in Nagoya (about an hour from me), so know where I was. FYI: Wii is Nintendo’s new console and had many many playable demos with its new “remote” controller that is motion sensitive. It’s amazing. Here are some pictures, I won’t bore you with the nerd fest, more are in my Photo album.
middle aged women playing WarioWare
And because, well, how could I not take a video of a fat guy shaking around?
Neat buildings from the train station after the expo.
The rest of the day was spent shopping and eating Indian food! Mm!
Saturday it was back to Nagoya to meet up with Ed’s friend from his Japanese class back home. We went to the TV Tower and from there saw some sort of big festival so we went there to check it out. It turned out to be a festival sponsored by companies, so it wasn’t so great. There was pro wrestling going on though!
Would you have a good time with these things there!?
Later we ate at an Okinawaian restaurant and went to see Nagoya Castle, famous for its “Golden Dolphins”. As you will see in the pictures, I don’t think they knew what a real dolphin looked like back then.
There was a lovely flower display going of chrysanthemums, as well as bonsai trees and other flowers. See for yourself:
Here are some miscellaneous pictures between then and now that you may find of some interest:
Obviously many more in the Oct & Nov photo folder (link to the right)
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