The day I got hit by a car...

Tuesday, April 8

Yes, I was literally run over by a car today. My life incredibly sucks. Read on for the full story...

This morning I emailed Mitch with my words about coffee hour. He later emailed me back and told me at school that they were wonderful and he really liked them! Here it is on Facebook! :)

After that, I went in to eat breakfast with everyone. Miyabi was all excited because today was her first day back at school. She's a ninensei (second year) now! She was wondering what class number she'd be in. She wanted 4 or 5, so she'd be close to the library and she wanted to be with her best friend, Tina.

Then I headed out on my bike to go to school. I noticed how pretty the shrine by our apartment looked last week with the sakura trees in front and it still looked gorgeous today, so I took a picture! All the Japanese people kept saying the sakura only last for a week, but it's been a week and three days now and they're still going strong! Everyone was freaking out, thinking the rain would wash them away, but we actually didn't get that much rain. :)

The entrance closer to our apartment

The entrance closer to the station

Then I continued on my way. I got to a crossing that I cross every day with no problem. I slowed down a bit, because I saw a red car approaching the crosswalk. There's no light telling me to walk or not here, so usually the cars slow to let bikers go. And this car did slow, so I charged ahead. But he must have been looking the opposite direction, because as I accelerated, so did he - a lot! And bam, he slammed right into my side!

Thankfully, I realized I was falling before I hit the ground, so I put my arm out to block my fall. But I landed on my wrist and sprained it badly. The force of the fall caused me to fly off my bike and slide across the road. Thank goodness I'd worn yoga pants instead of tights today! And man, Victoria's Secret makes excellent yoga pants, because they didn't rip at all!

But my knees got completely torn up underneath. I had really bad road rash.

The guy driving got out of the car and kept going "Daijoubu? Daijoubu?"

I just nodded and said "daijoubu" while trying not to cry. Then the crossing guard came over and was like, "daijoubu?" When I said yes, he left. 

There were also a bunch of people around who witnessed the crash, but they all continued on their way, not stopping to see how I was.

The driver had run over the front tire of my bike, so he backed up his car and then helped me pick up my bike. He watched to make sure I could walk and waited until I got on my bike and rode it a little to see if it still worked. It did, so then he left.

Damn, I was so freaked out that I wasn't thinking and couldn't speak Japanese or anything. I really wanted to yell at the guy or something, but I don't know enough Japanese. It was so hard. And the lack of people around doing anything really frustrated me. Like, if this had happened in America, I'm sure someone would have offered to call the police or something!

I kept going and a police officer type of guy who'd been standing at the next corner and saw everything was all like "ki o tsukute ne" when I passed.

The bike seemed a bit wonky, but I figured something was just stuck from the fall, and whatever it was would come out. And anyway, I was almost at the station and I was able to ride it just fine.

I was really freaked about the accident the entire way to school. I met up with Esteban at the subway and told him what happened. The subway was packed again, and the doors took several tries before they could finally close.

At school, Taylor and Minju were in the CJS office and I told them what had happened and they freaked out! Minju gave me a hug, which was just what I needed! Then I told the CJS office and Mitch told me to go to the clinic. I said I would, but I was going to take my quiz first because I didn't want to get a 0 on it. 

When I got to class, I told Kondo sensei I was going to the clinic after the quiz. Everyone freaked out when I told them what had happened. I took the quiz and it was super easy, and then I left to the clinic.

The lady at the clinic was so nice! She asked me all these questions about the accident, like where it had happened and stuff. I realized then that I hadn't gotten any information about the guy like his name or cell or license plate number or anything! I was so freaked out I didn't even think of it.

But the lady gave me one of those cold square sticky things the people in manga always have on their foreheads when they have fevers, to put over my wrist. And then she disinfected my knees and put bandages over them. Then she put these weird gauze sack things over my wrist and knees. I felt much better after that.

And then I was allowed to go back to class! The cold thing on my wrist was so nice. My wrist hurt a lot for a bit after, but by the end of the day it was feeling so much better!

All bandaged up!

For second period, we had class in K buidling. I freaked out because the room looked just like the classrooms in manga, haha. And I got there first, so I stole a seat by the windows! :)

See the protagonist's seat back there?

The erasers that look like sushi!

And the colored chalk!

Ah, it was beautiful! In class, after our kanji test (which was easy), we played a kanji game where we had cards with various kanji radicals and we had to put them together to make kanji from our chapter. It was fun!
I got second place!! First was the Taiwanese girl, of course!

Sakura out the window on the stairs

At lunchtime, I went to eat misokatsu at Dagane. I sat with Josephine and Jose and this other girl who I see a lot (she's in my calligraphy class), but who's name I don't know. There were so, so many people eating lunch!
There was a girl at the table next to us who's birthday was today, and a group of her friends came in and surprised her with a cake and a present of lip gloss! It was so cute! Then they all sang "Happy Birthday" in English. For some reason, "Happy Birthday" is always sung in English in Japan...?

After lunch, I walked outside and ran into Emma. I followed her to the green area where she'd eaten lunch and we sat there for a bit. Rana, Ben, and Devon found us there and sat with us and ate the bentos they'd gotten from Valor, a grocery store nearby. I told everyone the story of my accident and they were so surprised I was so upbeat and joking around about it! The scariness had worn off and it seemed kind of funny now. I'd been hit by a car! #shitthathappensinJapan

The beautiful sakura

In hanga class, I drew Totoro! I'm excited to carve him next week. :D

After class, I had a meeting with Fukutomi sensei, my project work sensei, to make up for the class I'd missed last Friday. I went to the CJS faculty office at 3, when we were supposed to meet, and finally got up the guts to use the microphone outside the office to ask for Fukutomi sensei. Another sensei came out to tell me she was still teaching class. So I went outside the office where I ran into Yukari! She asked what I was doing and when I told her, said she thought Fukutomi sensei's office was on the 7th floor. So we went up there, but it turned out those were all offices of English senseis. Yukari asked two people up there, but they didn't know who Fukutomi sensei was. So we went back downstairs, and as we entered the CJS office, Fukutomi sensei was coming out of the faculty room. Oh, good! I said goodbye to Yukari and then explained to Fukutomi sensei what had happened. She apoligized for being late.
Then she had me practice saying my interview questions and told me to interview at least two Japanese students by Friday. Ok, I can do that!

As I was leaving, I ran into Deanna who told me Minju had told her about my accident. She asked if I was okay and gave me a hug. People here are so nice! ^^ Also, Mitch let me know one of his colleagues had called my host family (whaaaat?? I hadn't wanted to worry them! I was waiting to tell them face to face so they could see I was fine!) and Yuko had said they could take me to the hospital if needed. Oh, gosh! I didn't want this to turn into such a big deal!
I went to the library to write my blog for a bit and then headed home. As I rode my bike home, I noticed something was definitely off. Every few seconds, the front wheel would catch on something and slow me down. It turned out the wheel was tilting one way and kept rubbing against the brake pad. It took me forever to get home.
I decided something was definitely wrong with it.

When I got home, Yuko made sure I was okay. I told her I definitely didn't need to go to the hospital because I could use my arm fine, so it wasn't broken. Then I told her that I didn't think the bike was okay, so she said she'd ask Ken to look at it tomorrow.

Argh, this is turning into such a hassle!

For dinner we had fried peppers with beef inside. They were good! We had salad, soup, and rice too! It was such a big, yummy dinner that filled me up! :) Miya told me she'd gotten into class #1. I was like, "aww, not by the library?" And she was unhappy about that. I asked her what class Tina had gotten and she said 4. That was the one she had wanted! Aw, man. I felt bad for her.

Tomorrow our class is during the CJS festa, so we'll just be talking to Japanese students during class! Yay!! I'm so excited! And that means we only have to be at school at 1:30! Whoooo!!
But I had the idea in hanga today to go for lunch at Sushiro, so Minju, Emma, and I are all going to meet at 11:30 tomorrow morning to eat there. Yay, I get to sleep in! 


Also, here are the links for the pep rally movies I uploaded to YouTube (because they weren't working on my blog). Please watch them!

Shirtless football players for the ladies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAa8McKyFNc

Cheerleaders for the guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUveIgohIOw

And cheerleaders singing what I think is our school song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0T3MHFh4cA

Sadou under the sakura (and new Kit Kats)!!

 Monday, April 7

Oh my gosh, the trains were insane today! Spring vacation was over for most people, so they were heading back to school. I made the 7:47 and wasn't even last in line, but elected not to take it because it was so stuffed and I couldn't deal with almost fainting again. So I was first in line for the 57, which made for a better ride.

The subway was just as bad! Omg, I definitely don't remember it being that bad in January. Ugh, it was completely stuffed. But guess who got on? Yukari and Sara, my Brazilian-Japanese friends I met at coffee hour last week and then did hanami with afterwards!

So we all rode to school together and I got to practice Japanese with them!

At Yagoto Nisseki, I told them I had to go to Lawson's so I could buy a bento to eat during photography club today. So they went with me. I bought a large bento and then Sara bought a drink and some chocolate. She tried the chocolate with me after she heard I'd never tried it before. It was good!

Then we walked the rest of the way to Nanzan, before we parted ways. 

I went into the CJS office before class to talk to my friends. Mitch (Matsui san) saw me and called me over, saying he wanted to talk to me. It turned out he wanted me to write a little something about last week's coffee hour to go on the CJS Facebook page! Yes, I'd been wanting to be selected to write about something for the CJS Facebook page!!

And he gave me a Nanzan highlighter as thanks! It was a weird highlighter that was waxy, so that it could be used over ink on paper. Cool!

In class, we had a test that I thought was pretty easy, and then we spent the rest of the period reviewing and then starting on chapter 13 in the new Genki book.

When class was over and it was lunch time, I reminded Natalia about photography club because I remembered she'd been interested in it, too.

I had no idea where the first meeting was supposed to be, but I knew there were two rooms where they said they usually met. One was in the clubhouse and one was in K building.

Natalia had brought a bento, so we went to Lawson's to heat them up and then headed to the clubhouse. The clubhouse was just like the clubhouses in manga and Japanese movies! It was so cool. 

There were a bunch of music sakurus practicing. We looked in all the rooms and couldn't find the photography club. We asked one guy we saw and he had no idea where they meet.

So we decided to try K building and if they weren't there, then just give up and go eat our lunch somewhere.

We looked through all the rooms in K too and didn't see them anywhere! We saw a whole bunch of Japanese students leaving a classroom, so we asked two of the guys. One of them was really, really cute!! They were sooooo nice! They told us maybe they were in the kopan and said they'd walk there with us to look. On the way, they asked us where we were from and stuff. I found out they were both ichinensei.When we exited K, they realized we were talking about the photography club, haha. So they said the meeting place probably wouldn't be in the kopan. 

They were really distraught about the fact that they couldn't help us, it was cute! I kept saying that it was fine! I asked what clubs they wanted to join and the cute one said a singing club, so I asked if he likes karaoke and he said he does! Then they told us they want to practice English with us, so the cute one gave me his email. It had "swimmer" in it, so I asked if he likes swimming and he does! I told him I do too and told him to come swim at the Nanzan pool sometime. And then the two of them headed to eat lunch and Natalia and I decided to eat our lunch out in the green area, because it was such a gorgeous day!

We saw Emma eating under a tree, so we joined her. It was beautiful with the sakura petals falling all around us!

So many petals!

Then Natalia left to go to class and Emma and I walked to the lockers so I could get my brushes for calligraphy. But we ended up not using our brushes in calligraphy.

We were starting making inkan with our names that we can use to sign our works of calligraphy. 

We had to rub our block on sandpaper to smooth down the side we were going to carve on.

Then we looked up the kanji in our names and found the super fancy, curly way of writing it. I couldn't find (kei) in the booklet we were given, so sensei had to look it up in her book. And she found it there! Haha, look how weird it looks! But I liked how the bottom looked like a little flower. :)

And here's "to"!

So then we had to draw them on our block and carve it. I chose to carve around the kanji, which is harder, but it will end up looking better, I think.

My attempts at carving the stone. It's harder than I thought!

Then it was time for my favorite class!!! Yay!! Today we had sadou outside so we could eat dango under the falling sakura petals. :D Therefore, I was super excited for today!

The senseis had brought out tatami mats with a red cloth over them and a red umbrella. We took turns sitting on the tatami under the umbrella. I was in the first group.

 

The dango was AMAZING!!! Sensei told us we couldn't eat it off the stick, lol. We had to take the stick out first and then use if to cut the dango (which was harder than you would think!) The green was filled with anko and the pink filled with sakura flavored paste! It was so, so delicious!

When it was my turn to go up and make tea, I had Pearl take my picture, haha.
We actually got to put in the matcha powder today! (Usually it's already in the tea cup and we just put water in and stir).

Me putting in the matcha powder

Both my senseis. I like how the older sensei is in the back with the sakura. It makes the picture look so Japanese!

Me stirring!

All done!

And now giving the tea to my guest

Ah, so fun! After class, I took pictures of the Genki II book in the library so I could do my homework tonight (we can't check out the book). Then I headed home.

Nanzan is so pretty with the falling sakura!

On the way to the train station I popped in Lawson's to buy a snack. I had seen these this morning with Sara and Yukari, so I wanted to go back to get them.

It turned out they were mini donuts! They were covered in sugar and filled with anko and really, really sweet!

On the way home, I stopped at Nagoya Eki because I was meeting Mami under the golden clock so she could give me my glove I'd forgotten on the train yesterday. I got there 15 minutes early, but 5 minutes later she showed up! She told me she'd seen it right after I got off the train, and had run after me, but I'd been gone already. I was like, "so you got off the train??" And she said she did, but it was okay because she caught the next one. Oh my gosh, she is so, so nice!!!

After I thanked her and we parted ways, I was like, damn I should have given her something for coming all the way to give me back my glove, especially since she'd had the day off work today. I was trying to think of what I had to give her, when I remembered the donuts!

So I ran after her and gave her one. She told me they were her favorite! So I gave her another and she was so, so happy! Yay! :)

Then I went home. At home, I parked my bike and decided to walk across the street to Seiyu. When I'd been locked out Saturday night and had gone into Seiyu, I'd seen the new Kit Kats that Miya and I had seen advertised on TV one day, and knew I had to go back and buy them. So I did! And they were on sale!

When I exited, I saw Yuko walking to go pick up Miyabi. I told her I'd just bought the new Kit Kats haha, and then I headed inside.

After we ate dinner, I was still hungry, so I decided I'd crack into the Kit Kats. I brought them into the kitchen to share with Miya and Yuko. Miya was reading the package and told me we had to put them in the oven! It turned out we did, so Yuko asked if I wanted to try it now and I said I did!

We don't have an oven, so we used the microwave, lol. We weren't sure if that would work, but we decided to try!

The Kit Kats!!

Back of the package

One of the Kit Kats

We took them out after a while, but all that had happened was they had melted... :/ What a shame. Yuko told me to try one and then decide if we should put them back in. I did. It was pudding flavored! I decided we should try to bake them more. So we did!

And then we saw them get all brown, so we took them out! Sugoi!! It seems like they melt first and then the melted part cooks!
They were SO SO SO GOOD!!!! They tasted like cake! Holy crap. New favorite Kit Kat!
I told my friends about it at school the next day and now they want to try them too, haha!

So good!

Thankfully I bought another package to take home to America!

What the inside looked like. Like a cookie!

Then I tried one plain and it definitely wasn't as good!

Ahhh, I freaking love Kit Kats!!!! Why are they so much cooler in Japan when they're an American dessert??

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!