Come Away with Me

Wakamatsu Summer Festival (若松夏祭り)

Japanese people are known to be extremely fond of festivals of all kinds and they celebrate in various styles througout all seasons.

In summer, people like to gather for summer festival which is like a funfair or carnival with booths selling typical Japanese fare like yakitori, grilled sweet corns and takoyaki and there is usually some kind of music and dance item as the night progress along. Girls like to dress up in yukata and eat kakikori (which is like our ice kacang without the beans and nuts) and just simply have fun at these festivals. The highlight of any summer festival, big or small, is definitely the fireworks or hanabi(花火).

My first Saturday on the island, i was invited to go to the summer festival at Wakamatsu area, which is next to the town of Narao. Melissa was sweet to lend me her yukata and even got her friend to help dress the 2 of us. Joe, the other new ALT in Kamigoto came along too and we headed to Wakamatsu for our night of summer fun.
Me, Melissa, Joe and Melissa's favorite student


The fireworks itself was much prettier than this. These don't look too much like firework do they? Somehow digital camera just don't do justice to it.

We were invited so a teacher's place for supper after the festival was over. The Iries prepared so much for us and i had the most delicious homemade ikuri shu (Japanese fruit wine made from a kind of apricot) ever! I think i must have said numerous times that i like the wine a lot cos before i left, they gave me a 1.5 litre bottle of the wine!

It had only been a week since i arrived on the island but many times I was simply overwhelmed by the kindness of the people here. Before coming, I was told that people in the rural area are generally more warm hearted as compared to their counterparts in the bigger cities. Surely day by day i see more and more truth in that as the people on this island had been really amazing, the lengths that they go to make foreigners like us feel extremely welcome anad at home.

posted by テレサ @ 11:54 PM