Livin' the McDream: First festival, food and random adventuring

Before I get to the festival, a couple things, if you've had any trouble viewing all the photos in previous posts you may need to refresh your browser a few times as you scroll down for them to all load. Sorry there are so many pictures, but I feel that's better than me just writing a bunch of jibberish....I will try not to make the posts so long and hard to view from now on :)

Here's a picture of the first bottle of sake we bought!

the bottle says:
"A SAKE which faintly falls down
the throat with a vaporous sensation
like the evanescing snows of spring."
How could we not buy something
with such an awesome description?

The Lake Towada Fireworks Festival was the first festival we went to. This is the beginning of "festival season" there will be multiple ones every week/weekend for the next couple of months. It took some convincing to get Keenan to go, there was a pretty good chance of rain, but it was going to be our chance at fireworks since there weren't any for the 4th of July. There wasn't more than a sprinkle of rain, we got to try traditional festival foods, see fireworks set off in a whole new way and spend time with new friends!

Pork? on a stick.

I chose not to eat the cartilage...
but it was pork and it was good

Pork and beef cooking.

Making yakisoba.

Lemon chu-hi,
the first of many flavors I've found...

Beef? on a stick (yes, it was beef, haha).

Yakisoba.

New friends!

From this point I apologize for the crappy pictures, my simple cameras are not made for night or action...

Several of these ferry boats went out onto the lake and made a semi circle.

Ferries lined up.

There was a small barge, without lights that cruised across the lake and lit off fireworks, there was also a smaller boat that went across dropping fireworks into the water, very cool to see them explode at the water's surface!

Random adventuring/photos...

Lunch at Karinba, a Chinese restaurant in Misawa.
We both had the sweet and sour chicken special.
It came with a cabbage salad, corn soup, rice,
Pepsi (first restaurant that had it instead of Coke!)
and a scoop of ice cream for dessert.
The food was really good!

Outside of Kappa Sushi, the restaurant I've
mentioned in earlier posts that has the sushi train.

A meal from Global Kitchen, a restaurant in Misawa. It was their special that day which happened to be a variety of Thai foods. From top left to right, a chicken dish, fried rice with egg, soup, thai style yakisoba, another chicken dish, spring roll, cabbage salad with cold chicken. Although it all looked good, neither of us was impressed at all. The place has a good reputation, but that might mostly be for an international Sunday buffet they have...

Outside pic of Global Kitchen.

This is an electronics store, we ordered our air conditioner here.
Check out the sign...Yamada, "For Your JUST"

Outside of a small bakery, loaf of bread on the street sign.

Melon bread.

Honey and butter bread, this was just ok,
I wasn't a fan of the honey, just tasted different to me.

Strawberry marble bread...yum!

Small pond we drove past, I loved all the water lilies blooming.

Cows!!

Exploring a tsunami barrier and found a full can of Pabst!

These baby trees were planted to replace ones that were wiped
out in the 2011 tsunami, also notice how the other trees lean.

Leaning trees, from tsunami damage.

Nope, that boat doesn't belong there,
this was several hundred meters from the beach.

I'm going through a hydrangea obsession. They are everywhere here,
growing in gardens and in the wild. The colors vary so much, beautiful!
This is on one of the main roads in Misawa on the edge of town.

Found some Cecil chocolate at the Universe grocery store.

JULY 23rd...our Unaccompanied Baggage got delivered!!! YAY!
We now have more clothes, a microwave, trash can,
vacuum, dehumidifier, fans, most of my kitchen stuff and a normal size tv!
Now if we could just get our bed!

Peach flavored chu-hi I picked up at the store,
it's yummy!

For anyone worried about me keeping busy, I've been applying for different jobs, none of them technically have openings but they are open postings. A couple at the schools and a couple nursing related. I also volunteered to make 24 cakes for a Special Olympics fundraiser this week. And I got to wash and put away clothes and kitchen stuff that got delivered. I'm not bored at all!

This was an office picnic/function with locals,
Keenan taught them how to play beer pong!

A random trip I made to the beach to hunt for floats...

I think this was some sort of jelly fish,
I've never seen one with bumps like that before.
I thought it was glass at first, but it was soft...

Beautiful sunny July day! Ahhhh so much fog!
Hardly have seen the sun since we've been here,
but I guess that's typical weather for this time of year.

Road to the beach I went to...

I was out wandering this tsunami barrier,
but always watching where I stepped,
don't know if you can see them very well,
but in those cracks are thousands of cockroaches! Gross!

Beautiful beaches (there's some sarcasm there,
if not for the trash they probably would be beautiful)
...so sad that most of them are like this.
Makes looking for floats interesting though, could be hiding with the trash!