Matsuri III

Kokura Gion

At a shrine some sort of ceremony takes place:




Loud drums, cymbals and chanting

Chocobananas decorated nicely to attract the masses:

Tobata Gion

Sparing you guys the stalls we'll go straight to the main event, the parade!

They went around in circles

Before they changed the float to:

The one on the left almost fell over

Matsuri II !!!

Matsuri II

The second festival i went to was fireworks at Wakamatsu, the suburb next to where we live. Unfortunately my friend finished uni late so there wasn't time to put on a yukata =S. We took a ferry from Tobata to Wakamatsu:The red bridge at Tobata - apparently K-dawg helped design it:
Police in our prefecture look like:
I prefer NSW police uniform =P

Don't ask me why that guy is wearing a pink guys yukata (there were two of them). You can just see Satoko - we went to the festival together.
'

Festival food only found in Kyushu - Hashimeki? Japanese pancake on chopsticks:

Goldfish fishing with a thin piece of paper!!! i didn't get any on my first go ^^.
Pretty girls in pretty yukata ^^

A snippet of the pretty hanabi (fireworks)

The goldfish i got for trying lol:

Third festival is called Kokura Gion Festival...keep a look out!

Summer in Japan means!?!?!?!

MATSURI I!!! FESTIVALS!!

First up is the Hakata Yamagasa Gion festival. It's held in the capital of our state Fukuoka - the biggest city in Kyushu. It has a loooooong history, we set off at 11pm with Tin's tutor and his girlfriend:

"Yama" literally mountain - they're very decorative and each one changes every year on both sides.

For those that know - Gegege no kitaro

Men in Japanese loincloths

Old man changing in public -__-"

A yama a team of 12 or 16 men will be carrying and running with, of course they changed the carriers. The yama are VERY heavy...hundreds of kilograms up to a tonne. There's seven in total, they time a 5km?? course.

My first bit of festival food!!! shaved ice XD

My vantage point - next to a chicken skewer stall *salivates*

Sooooo many people -___- at 4am in the morning

A vid of the first yama approaching the finish line:

More festival posts coming up!!!

supa!! ICS info

Supermarkets in and around KIT

Mostly this is relevant to ICS students that are going to stay at the Tobata campus dorms, if you don't know this is where you're staying.

Firstly, the closest supermarket is called Spina, it's pretty damn close, two minutes by bike depending on how fast you ride. It's pretty cheap but it closes at 8pm, it has most things you need - including alcohol (so much alcohol!!) , a tiny 100yen (plus GST so 105yen) section etc. There are no butchershops or seafood stores, it's all precut prepackaged in the supermarkets.

Meat is EXPENSIVE, you can find 'aussie beef' but unless it's on special.... chicken is by far the most available in Kyushu.

The variety of fruit isn't fantastic, it's pretty much apples, bananas, NZ golden kiwis (yeah random), normal kiwis, oranges...

The cheapest supermarket ever in western Japan is called Trial. The best damn place ever, it's a little far, you'd only go there by bike and you couldn't technically bring a lot back but it's huge, it's 24 hours and so cheap! Everything is there - electronics (hair dyers, memory sticks, vacuum) , bikes, cheapass clothes you'd never wear, some furniture, pillows, you name it.
If you go there i suggest you buy meat at the beginning of the week and try to stay away from the cheap stuff - it's cheap already and let's just say my first adventure didn't turn out well.

There's no BBQ sauce. I found one small packet but it was expensive and had about 200mL in it - not worth it.
There isn't much chinese stuff either - there's oyster sauce of all things - but other sauces and ingredients nope.

Supermarkets in Japan also tend to make obento and little side dishes in case you're lazy. Croquettes, tempura etc. At the end of the day they sell those cheaper cos it's all made fresh.

The last supermarket you're likely to visit is about five minutes by bike. It's called Marushoku. Here you can find sour cream (oh thank whoever is above), and lots more variety than Spina. It closes at 10pm. It also has a bakery that sells imitation bagels...

Weekend trip with Aesthetics engineering lab

As students at a Japanese University we were assigned to a professor and his lab. Our professor is Kimura sensei, and the students in our lab are structural engineers. Our lab doesn't really do field trips but downstairs the aesthetics lab do, and Kimura sensei (K-dawg as we like to call him) was kind enough to ask them to take us along.

We set out in three cars on a terrible rainy Saturday morning. I slept and when i woke up we had arrived. I'm not exactly sure where we went really... but the first place we visited was called Dazaifu Tenman-gū.

We first headed to some temple places, i love Japanese architecture so it was fun to see. The weather sucked though but we had to make the best of a bad situation:

This is the front garden of a house where you sat in the veranda and peacefully gaze out into the backyard. It was really pretty

The wishes people wrote:
We had this delicious red bean thingy with green tea...

Some aesthetics lab people




Reading our fortunes:




Purify yourself!
People with bad luck this year:
BBQ for dinner!!
Sensei gets very very impatient lol

KANPAI!!! In the girls part of the dormDay Two:
We stop by this rustic little village, where some famous guy (can't remember his name now) from Japanese history sat on a rock. LOLOLOL the guys were like "OMG (Insert name of famous samurai here) sat on this rock! quick! take a photo!".


Japanese sweets. IT WAS DELICIOUS >.<
Tin's thoughts: *i can do this i can do this!!*
Why i failed art in year 7 & 8...


The bridge we drove up extremely windy and narrow roads to see cos it was designed by the best bridge builder in Japan who's the friend of this sensei.


Neko bus!! (from totoro)The long tiring trip home ^^