On
the bus to the Nebuta festival. Today’s
schedule has so far been:
5:30am - Get up (though Dan and I were up at
5:00am)
6:30am - Leave
the Arais’
7:00am - Arrive
outside Sendai Station - we bought some food for the trip.
Dan got Jasmine tea and sour peach gummies.
I got a Georgia coffee and some Cookies & Cream sticks.
7:20am - Get on the bus
We
have had two bathroom breaks. The
last one was 10:07am to 10:17am and Dan got some Japanese beer nuts kind of
thing that has a cheese coating. In
Japanese they are “kaki no tane” - persimmon seeds - because they are shaped
like seeds. Apparently they are quite popular and come in all sorts of
flavors.
We
will stop for some shopping in about an hour.
We will stay for 20 minutes then go to a lake where we can eat.
We will be at the lake for 40 minutes.
So
far the bus trip has been very fun, though I think Dan is a little tired and
maybe he likes not traveling better. But
I think he will think Nebuta is worth it.
After
seeing Nebuta (for four hours) we will have a dinner snack at an onsen (hot
springs). I’m looking forward to
that, but a little self-conscious in that the Japanese girls are so skinny, I
will stick out like a sore thumb - or an elephant!
Oh,
as part of the bus tour groups, we get/have to wear these little “group
friend” tags. It is a little silly, but very Japanese, so I love it.
*
* * * *
2:15pm
We
are still on the bus. We stopped at
Katsuno (Deer Antler) and bought Dan’s sister a kitty dangle and me a glass
owl dangle (for my cell phone). Then
we had rice and mochi (rice paste) soft serve ice cream!
It was really delicious, though you could tell that the texture was
different from “normal” ice cream. Apparently
this area is well known for such ice cream.
Next
we stopped at the lake - it is the second largest in the Tohoku region.
It was raining so Miho and Kei bought two umbrellas, one of which they
let us use. We walked on the
lakeside to an apparently famous statue of two naked old women. We decided not to take a picture of it. We were running a little late since our lakeside stroll
started out at a leisurely pace, so we had to hurry back to the bus to leave at
1:05pm. As fitting the general
theme of the bus trip, we were on time but still the last people back on the
bus.
After
the lake, we drove through Orise Gorge and saw lots of small but neat waterfalls
(taki). Now I think we are on the way to the festival, but I don’t
understand everything the bus tour lady is saying. I was translating to Dan about how deep the gorge was (over
6,000 meters in places) but thought the lady was saying that we were going to
drive by the gorge. So while I was
looking for the gorge, turns out we were actually driving in the bottom of it!
We
should return to Sendai at 6:00am tomorrow morning.
Not really going to help the jet lag, I don’t think, but well worth it.
Besides, my theme for this trip is “I can sleep in the US”.
12:30am
Nebuta
festival was so cool! It was 2
hours and we didn’t see all of it - we missed maybe one or two floats, I
think. The floats were huge and
there were quite a lot of them. I
burned two rolls of film. I hope
they turn out. I upped the shutter
speed on my camera so hopefully it will be okay, but the way those guys would
spin the floats around and the fact that the only lights were coming from the
floats themselves… well, here’s hoping!
In between the floats were dancers, taiko drummers, and flutists.
All the dancers and even the crowd would chant along with the music.
For Nebuta, the chant is “rasera, rasera, rase, rase, rase, ra”.
Once
we got back on the bus, we drove an hour to AppleLand Hotel and Onsen where we
stayed for almost 2 hours. We had
an evening snack then took a bath. So
nice and hot and wonderful. It was
my first natural hot springs, actually. The
smell of sulfur was rather strong, but my skin looks great!
Now
we are back on the bus, making our way to Sendai.
We should arrive back at the station at 6:00am.
Until then, we get to sleep.
On to August 7 Journal Entry
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