Neighborhood festival

Our neighborhood hosted a small festival in the park across from our house this weekend. It seems that Japan is always celebrating with small festivals, especially in the summer. We tried to figure out what it was for, but I think it was just to have some fun with the neighbors. It did also fall on the last official day of rainy season, so that’d be a good reason to celebrate!

 Everyone was in great spirits and there was lots of food and games organized for the kids. Most things were free, but you could also use coupons to buy special BBQ’d meats and some of the drinks. The game everyone was most excited for was called Suikawari, or watermelon splitting. There were three teams each trying to break their watermelon. Each kid takes a turn being blindfolded and spun around 3 times. Then their teammates yell at them where to walk and they get one chance to hit the watermelon. The kids concentrated really hard and took their time since they only had one whack at it. It was fun to watch and Wilson had fun trying it!

 The next game was a drinking race.

(Can you spot Leo in this pic?)

Wilson didn’t really get the idea, but really enjoyed his juice!

The bigger kids raced with soda.

And the adults raced with beer. Nathan held me back when I offered to show them some U of Iowa tricks! Our neighbor from across the street, Yoshi, was the winner.

Nathan was asking this man about what the adults were drinking during their race and he bought Nathan a beer. They said cheers - kanpai!

This was a fishing game where the kids had sharp edged hooks and they tried to pick up the balloons by their strings without popping them.

The food was fabulous! There were rice balls with different fishy fillings and rolled in things like seaweed and sesame seeds. Yum!

Here is a tree where you could hang your wishes written on special paper.

The boys were given small presents to take home.

Our neighbors are so nice! They were very sweet and welcoming. The few that speak English were eager to chat and everyone loves the boys. We feel really happy to have found such a great neighborhood!