Inuyama Matsuri with Ayuko, Emma, Mami!!!

Sunday, April 6

Today everyone left at 7 am to go to Handaa. I woke up at 7:30 to get ready for church, and I saw Yuko had left me an AMAZING breakfast!!! My two favorite things: bananas and chocolate chip melon pan! And I love peach juice :P

At church, I ran into Milayla and her mom. Her mom told me to give her my email next time. I would have liked to have talked to them longer, but I had to run because I was meeting everyone at Inuyama station at 11.

I went over quickly to give Father some chocolate and chocolate covered praline clusters as well as a note I'd written in Japanese and English thanking him for Friday. He just said thanks real quick, but later I got an email from him thanking me again and saying he really enjoyed it! :)

Then I rushed home, finished getting ready, grabbed my breakfast and rushed to the station.

It was a long ride to Inuyama, but I got there about 15 minutes before 11. When I exited the gate, I saw Mami and went over to say hi. It turned out Ayuko was there already as well! Japanese people are always so prompt. :)

While we waited for Emma, we talked about the earthquake last night. I'd completely forgotten about it!! But Ayuko and Mami had felt it too, so it had been real! I found out later that it apparently hit in Gifu.

Then Emma showed up and I told everyone the story of last night. This morning I had really bad bruises covering my legs and thighs from fence hopping last night, lol.

Then we headed out to the matsuri!

Outside the station

The matsuri! There were so, so many people!

We saw a turtle catching game!

Cute yatai!

One of the small floats by the huge building we thought was probably where the floats are housed

One of the humungo floats!

There were soooooo many people! Everyone was literally just standing in the street because you couldn't move. We were squished like sardines like how I am on the way to school every morning!

Carrying the float we saw

Cute kids on the back all dressed up in traditional clothes

Beautiful float with flowers and mochi

Ayuko, Mami, me, and Emma in front of one of the floats

Mami and me!

Then we walked a different way than the floats were going so there would be less people. We came upon a school filled with sakura! It was beautiful.

Sakura all down the road next to the school

Sakura at the entrance to the school

We kept walking down the street towards Inuyama castle.

See the castle?? OuO

Cute kids in kimonos on the shoulders of their dads, who are wearing happi because they are festival volunteers

More giant floats!

And we arrived at the main festival area at the base of the castle.

So many floats!

All the food stands with the castle behind them

Us with the floats

And us with the food and the castle

Cool float shaped like a ship exiting the shrine

Close up of the ship float

One of the huge floats was wheeled into the shrine

Going in

Then the other huge floats started to be carried in. There were so many people trying to take pictures, that we decided to escape.

I wanted to go up to the castle, so we did that.

The way up to the castle had a bunch of mini shrines. We found a place that sold fortunes based on your name. And believe it or not, we all found our names! Everyone was really shocked there was a "keito", but I mean, it is an actual Japanese word (it means wool)!

See Keito? It's in the second row, fourth from the right

Because she's a sweetheart, Ayuko bought us all a fortune of our name. I picked one of the Keito ones and I ended up with good luck!

The shrine

If you look closely under the sakura tree in this picture (against the dark wood roof of the shrine), you can see sakura petals falling!

And more petals in the upper right corner

And even more!

It was so pretty!! One even landed in my hair, so I made everyone take a picture, haha!

The shrine was like a mini replica of Fushimi Inari.

The inari (fox) statue at the shrine

 

My favorite thing were the ema because they were pink and heart shaped!! Ahh, I really wanted one.

One of them that I didn't take a picture of, said the girl wanted a hot guy, haha!

So cute!!

Me with the fake Fushimi Inari

More cool ema

Then we found this donkey shrine. Ayuko told us people prayed to it for fertility, to have a lot of healthy children.
It was really awesome having Ayuko there, since she's fluent in both Japanese and English. So she could translate whenever Mami, or Emma and I didn't understand something.
I'm unbelievable jealous of her because of that!
Shout out to Ayuko, because she told me she reads my blog!! :)))

When we got up to the castle, it turned out we had to pay to even go in to take pictures of it. But Ayuko and Mami bought tickets for Emma and me! They're the best. :)

The castle was gorgeous with all the sakura!

Love this picture!

When Mami I think it was, took this picture for me, this guy standing next to me made a joke, pretending to put his arm around me and be in the picture too. I accidentally kind of made a face, and one of the ladies that was in his group saw and apologized. I felt really bad!

And this one!

And this oneeee!!

We had been planning on going into the castle, but the line was horrendous. It wrapped all around the little sitting area around the castle, so we decided it wasn't worth the wait.
We walked over to see the view instead.

So pretty!

"Welcome To Inuyama" Ayuko's laughing at the other side because...

It was written in Japanese on the front!

Bye castle!

Then we left and headed back to the festival. It rained on our way down. But thankfully, it was only a quick sun shower.

Pretty view up on the mountain

And after the rain, another sakura petal flew into my hair! Everyone was jealous of my awesome sakura trapping hair.

See it in my bangs?

The stairs back down to the festival area

On the way back, we saw this little shrine with a cow. Ayuko informed us it was a shrine for help with studies. Many students went to pray there to get into the school they wanted. And you could run the cow for good luck.

Ayuko also said that people volunteer to help keep the shrine clean and the cow polished. There isn't anyone who gets paid to do this.

There was one where someone wrote a prayer to get into Tokyo University!

Colorful paper cranes!

The banners say that it's a shrine for praying for studies

When we got back to the festival area, the last float was entering the shrine. There were still so many people around, so we went back up the path to Inuyama castle to buy some food from the stalls there.

Ugh, the charms were so expensive! 1000 yen for that cute pink one :(

Kakigori stall. I liked the sakura over it.

When I'd been with my new friends from Coffee Hour in Tsurumai Koen last Wednesday, I'd inquired about the egg between crackers everyone was eating. They'd told me it was called tamasen and I should try it sometime! 

So that sometime turned out to be today. I told Mami and Ayuko about how I was interested in trying it, so we all decided to go to a tamasen booth!

Tamasen turned out to be egg (tamago) between two crackers, called senbei. Hence the name tamasen. This booth was making the tamasen with yakisoba too! And the guy didn't fold the senbei like a sandwhich like I'd seen it the other time, but apparently this made it easier to eat because the egg didn't drip as much.

The guy's making the eggs heart shaped!!

My tamasen!

Mmmmmm!

Yay, tamasen!

Hole crap, it was delicious!! So, so amazing! The senbei was ebisen, so it was shrimp flavored! Oishii! I think it was a really good deal for 400 yen.

I'd seen a kingyo sukui (goldfish scooping) stall, just like in manga, so I knew I had to try it out!

It was only 300 yen and you could play without keeping the fish, so that's what I did.

The fish all looked pretty dead lol. Yuko told me later that it's because everyone's catching them and bumping them and everything that they're really weak usually. Miyabi won three a few years back and they all died within a week.

Kingyo sukui sign

The whole time I had Ayuko, Mami, and Emma all with their cameras (Ayuko had my camera), cheering me on and snapping my picture. I felt so famous!
I managed to catch four fish total! And every time I caught one this old lady behind me would exclaim "Ah! Jouzu ne!"(Ah, she's so good at it!)
Yuko also told me later that I was good at it! I didn't think four was very many, but I guess it must be?

Starting!

Everyone told me to go for one of the black fish. That's the one I wanted to catch, because whenever I used to play the Naruto video games, there was a part where you could do kingyo sukui and the black fish were always worth the most points because they were the fastest.

And I managed to catch one pretty quickly! It was so cute with it's giant eyes!

See? Adorable!

Then my paper net broke :(

But I was allowed two nets, so I got to keep catching! Next, everyone pointed out a HUGE, super obese gold fish and laughed, joking that I should catch that one. I said I would and boom, right after I said that I caught it! I completely freaked out! I squealed, saying "I got it!!" and all the Japanese people around me were looking and laughing and saying "Jouzu, jouzu!"
It was awesome! :)

I was shocked the huge fish hadn't broken my net! I was able to catch two more after that. A pretty gold one and a kind of speckled one. Then my second net broke, so I had to release the fish.

After the fun of goldfish scooping, we bought drinks (I got grape fanta!) and Emma got karage that she shared with us. Then Ayuko wanted donuts because she's seen a sign for them when we first walked in, so we headed back to where we had come in.
This time, we decided to go into the school yard to look around.

Looks just like a manga!

The sakura there were beautiful!

We saw all these girls dressed up in lolita clothes. They were so cute! Ayuko asked if we could take a picture with them, but then she just took a picture of the rest of us with them! She should have been in it too!

 

We found the donut place and bought a box of donuts to split. I also got this thing on a stick that Miyabi and my host parents had eaten at the doubutsuen yesterday. It had looked really good, so I asked Mami and Ayuko what it was called and they told me it's goheimochi! It's made with rice and mochi! The one they were selling here was kurumi goheimochi, so it was walnut flavored.

Then Emma and Mami got ice cream. Mami got green tea ice cream, which I love! I'm going to miss the abundance of green tea flavored things when I go back to America.

Argh, my pictures are flipping again. Anyway, we each got a donut with a different flavored sugar to put on it. Emma - cinnamon, Mami - that soy bean powder stuff we put on bread at home, me - green tea

We played rock, paper, scissors to see who got the last donut, and I won! I can't believe it! Must be all that practice I've gotten from playing literally every day with Miyabi!

When we finished eating, we walked along a street lined with little shops on the way out.It had gotten really windy and chilly, so I was happy I had my coat.

One place had a guy making art using sugar!

See the cute sugar bunny he made?

More of his creations

A little farther down we found another guy making sugar art! He was making a pikachu, which was awesome!! Btw, I had a revelation about the name "pikachu". In Japanese "pikapika" means "sparkle sparkle," like when pikachu's cheeks sparkle with electricity and "chu" is what a mouse says, and pikachu is an electric mouse. So that's why he's called "pikachu"! OMG, right??

 

When he'd done, he hangs them upside down to dry.

There were these totally awesome floats with a ton of lanterns too! They are lit up at night. The guys were attaching all the lanterns to get the floats ready for tonight!

 

The volunteer guys are so colorful!

I really wanted to stay until after dark to see them lit up! Ah well. Minju did, because she went too (I think Saturday), and here's the picture she took!

So pretty!

Anyway, then a little mini parade came through like the one I'd witnessed at Shinsoji Temple in Tokyo.

Then Mami bought some of those little bread things that are in cartoon character shapes. She gave us each one and I got a Doraemon!

Also everyone took my picture here because of all the pink, haha

Ayuko saw this game like pinball she wanted to play. She let us each have a turn as well. We had to fling the balls and then they could land in little holes. If we got balls in all the holes in a line, we got a prize! We came so close to making two different lines, but we ended up with nothing. But we got a consolation prize!

Ayuko trying to do it!

Ayuko's not happy with her consolation prize...

Cute heart shaped waffles on a stick covered in chocolate and sprinkles!

Mami saw this place where you could be a ninja and try throwing shuriken! She and I freaked out because it was like real life Naruto, haha!

Everyone got one free shuriken throw. Sweet!

Imma ninja!

At least I hit the wall beside the target instead of the floor like Emma and Ayuko, haha!

And then we all headed out. It was sad to leave, but we all were going home for dinner.

It says "Inuyama Matsuri"

Mami and I rode back together. We talked all about movies and television shows we like, both Japanese and American. Then I got off at Nagoya. I stupidly forgot my glove on the train, but Mami texted me later that she had picked it up for me! She's so sweet!

I had decided I wanted to stop at Kiyosujo on the way home. Ayuko and I are still going to go sometime, but I wanted to see it with the sakura, because I can see them surrounding it from the train window every day, and I really wanted to get a picture up close.
So I rode the JR to Kiyosu, which is on my route! Then I asked the station master how far it was on foot and he told me 15 minutes! I stopped at a Circle K on the way to make sure I was heading the right direction and they told me it was another 15 minutes from there. Yeah, it took me like 8.
I wasn't sure I was going the right way when I got to this busy road, but I saw a bunch of sakura on the other side of it, so I decided I'd go check out what they were. So I walked up onto the walking overpass and boom, I saw the castle. It was an amazing view of it!

Sign advertising a sakura matsuri

To get to the castle, you had to walk through a tunnel of sakura! Kirei!!

And all these cute pink lanterns were lining the sides of the tunnel

There were food stalls too. I was surprised there weren't many people at all and Yuko and Ken were too when I told them later.

And there's the red bridge I always see from the train!

The castle's at the other end of the bridge

I liked how both the JR and the Shinkansen were passing at the same time!

Pretty river with the reflections of the sakura

The castle was closed for the day already. Maybe that's why there were so few people.

So many sakura petals in the river!

And then they lit the lanterns because it was getting dark

After that, I headed home. Everyone had just started eating dinner because it was a few minutes after 7. We had burritos! Yum! And they let me have three burritos, too, which was nice because I was starving even though I ate so much today!

I talked a lot about my day and Yuko said they'd seen some of the Inuyama matsuri on tv today! Cool!