Festival

I can safely say that this festival has wrung us out. Here was our basic schedule for this past weekend.


Friday: I help pull the giant cart around town.. for 6 hours. After work, Claire and Caleb joined me.

Saturday: Caleb pulled the cart. Miyuki, Rachael and I went to the salon to get our hair festival ready.
The hairdresser had no trouble with Miyuki's hair, but found my hair to be too thick and Rachael's hair to be too thin. Somewhere between the two of us is perfect hair for Japanese festival hairdos.
In the evening All of us danced the Ichinohe dance about a mile down the main road. (If I can navigate the treacherous youtube upload system there will be a video of this soon.)
The woman who dressed us in the yukata grumbled constantly about the size of my chest and the size of Claire's hips. We were not built for kimono. Racheal and Miyuki were fine though.

After the dance Claire had an after party. JETs came from miles around to attend.
Sunday: We attended a pottery firing at the Goshono Jomon center. (Which I should probably write a post about.) After the pottery firing we helped pull the cart for about 7 hours and attended an after party with the other people who pulled the cart.
We've had a great time but I'm so glad to relax.


This is just a scattering of pictures that other people took. I'm encouraging Caleb to get on soon and post some of the pictures we took with our camera.

Say it with me everyone

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

May I be frank?


Y'all, it's been 99 degrees in my house the past few days. It's been 92 degrees at night.

Safe to say, it's been hot.

Our new neighbor, a wonderful lady from the UK, asked how southern Americans dealt with the heat. I almost felt sheepish admitting that most people have air conditioning.

It's true that Ichinohe's summer isn't as bad as Tennessee's summer ( or Georgia's summer or Mississipi's summer or...). The heat wave broke yesterday when some rain finally made it into town. Rain can easily cut down the temperature by ten degrees. Two days with scattered showers (like the ones we've been having) leave the temperature in my house at a very agreeable 87.

There are some great perks to summer as well. Most towns in Japan have a festival or two during the summer. Our big festival is still a couple of weeks away but we had a fun little event just this week.

They call it a caterpillar race. Well, really they call it a long Japanese word that I didn't quite catch.

Teams are tied together at the ankles. They have to complete little challenges along the way. Oh and several teams had cool little group outfits.
We all loved the grapes.


This bus costume was in-SANE. They had this little generator on wheels behind the group. There was 0ne station that involved tossing water balloons between group members. I wonder if it made them nervous.




The group that dressed up as packs of cigarettes were almost dead last.



Our seats were right beside the third station. A "Mystery Food and Drink" station. When the racers reached the station they had to eat or drink whatever was given to them before they could continue the race. The fastest groups to move on were the ones that got bananas. The slowest by far were the groups where each member had to eat a whole cucumber. A cucumber doesn't seem like much food, until you're trying to eat one in under a minute.

Here's my favorite group (dressed as Alice in wonderland characters) eating bananas.

Don't you just want to squeeze the Cheshire cat?


The Queen of Hearts was the fastest eater there. She had that banana gone in two seconds!
And here's us! The other blond lady is our new neighbor, and the shorter lady is Miyuki ( who is even cuter than the Cheshire cat).