August 6, 2011

(summer = natsu, festival = matsuri, city = shi)

Today is the summer (natsu) festival in Omigawa and Tonosho. Gordon and I got up this morning, ate breakfast and decided to walk around Tonosho. We walked past the park where the sumo wrestlers practice and walked to the train station near us. We can walk to most of the necessary places in Tonosho: the dry cleaners, convenience stores, gas stations and the grocery store. We stopped in Family Mart and bought a Coke to drink while we walked around. It was hot, humid and there were a couple of rain clouds in the sky. It’s a little difficult walking from place to place because there aren’t really sidewalks. There’s just a narrow area of the road that’s technically a drainage area for water (cement blocks with holes every so often). We stopped in the local grocery store before heading home. There were lots of people doing their shopping. We decided to pick up a few things. We bought creamer (in the little disposable containers), cereal (coco crispy type things) and chips that taste and look like French fries (Gordon’s nephews told us about these things, there’s a giraffe on the container :). 

Yummy!

2:30 pm

We are currently getting ready to leave the house and head to Omigawa where the festival (matsuri) is taking place. Gordon is writing in his journal, trying to write down all the things that have happened here thus far. We’ve been talking about some of the weekend trips we might be making. Sometime in September we want to go to Chiba City (shi) to visit Gordon’s predecessor, Patrick. Chiba is probably one of the closest bigger cities to Tonosho. They have a Starbucks (need I say more?) Tomorrow we are going car (kuruma) shopping! There are two types of cars in Japan, yellow tag and white tag cars. Yellow tags are smaller, more gas efficient and are used for driving around town. White tags are usually bigger (or nicer), less gas efficient and you can make road trips with them. Obviously we want a nice car and even though the yellow tags are more common (and very compact and cute) a white tag car might be better for us. However the car we get depends on the price and because of the earthquake/tsunami there is a shortage of cars. That means prices for new AND used cars have gone up. We might end up with a moped, hahaha!

Endo-san conned Gordon into dressing up as a Kabuki theater character at the festival.

AHHH!

Real Kabuki characters.

Gordon (still in character) eating cold bean soup with sticky rice balls.

Gordon and Endo-san walking down the hill from the festival (they are both eating cucumbers on a stick).