Misawa Tanabata Festival - end of July

Well we have now been here just over a month! And so far we are really enjoying ourselves (minus not having our stuff)!

July 26th we went to the Misawa Tanabata Festival. It went on for three days I think. Here's the history of what the festival is celebrating:

Tanabata is a Japanese tradition wherein people write their wishes on tanzaku papers (colorful, small strips of papers) and hang them on bamboo branches. People also decorate bamboo branches with various kinds of paper decorations and place them outside their houses.
It's said that tanabata's origin dates back to more than 2,000 years ago with an old Chinese tale. Once there was a weaver princess named Orihime and a cow herder prince named Hikoboshi living in space. After they got together, they were playing all the time and forgot about their jobs. The king was angry at them and separated them on opposite sides of the Amanogawa River (Milky Way). The king allowed them to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar. Tanabata literally means the night of the seventh, and it's also known as the star festival. It's believed that Orihime and Hikoboshi can't see each other if the day is rainy, so people pray for good weather and also make wishes for themselves. Depending on regions, it's celebrated on July 7 or August 7 (which is around the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar) in Japan. Many cities and towns hold Tanabata festivals and set colorful displays along the main streets.

Seems like Tanabata Festivals are held in almost every city/town. They are held on various days in July and August (possibly moved away from the traditional dates so that they wouldn't have overlap??). Our weather was drizzly/rainy so many of the displays had been covered with plastic. They were prepared!

View down the street as we walked off the base.

Chicken on a stick.

Lots of people (especially children)
wear traditional kimonos to festivals.

Fried cheese on a stick!

Similar to carnival games with small prizes.

Outside of the restaurant Kiku Zushi that
I had mentioned in a previous post.

On Sunday the 28th we wanted to go to a Regatta boat race that was going on as part of a festival at Lake Ogawara (the lake right next to the base). We drove to the area where the main festival was but didn't see any boats. We ended up finding out the race was being held at a different part of the lake, looked at a map and guessed where it might be at. Took us about 30 minutes to drive there, but we had guessed right. There weren't very many people there, and definitely did not see any other American's. These were homemade boats. We had to wait around quite a while before any racing happened, after watching one race we decided to leave. There was no way to know how long it would be til the next race, and there weren't many other boats around.

the winners

These guys had a cool looking boat, but they couldn't steer at all,
ended up quite a ways from the finish.

After the Regatta race we continued driving around the north side of the lake and up to a beach we hadn't been to and attempted to hunt for some floats, it was so foggy it was hard to even see much down the beach. No floats :( After that we had lunch at a ramen restaurant "HO-OH" back in Misawa.

Rice field.

Foggy!

Menu, I had the Original Special Spicy Flaver Soup w/ Noodles.
Keenan had the Extra Spicy Flaver Soup w/ Noodles.

Gyoza for appetizer.

My ramen.

Outside of restaurant.

I'll also add that there's no way I'll ever be able to eat ramen as quickly as most Japanese people do. After we sat down all the other tables around us were seated and they all left before we did. It's so hot, even when I wait and blow on every bite I end up burning my mouth and somehow they manage to eat it right away and at lightening speed. I just don't get it! My entire mouth would be blistered. Maybe the slurping they do cools it down??

Growing in the yard across the street from our house,
the big ones were close to 12" diameter!

Went to lunch at a karaoke place, no I did not sing, maybe next time? Maybe. Karaoke is huge in Japan and most places you pay by the hour and your group gets a private room.

Sign in the karaoke room.

Doesn't Keenan look good in purple? It took some convincing...

Yakisoba, not that good compared to Cheese Roll's yakisoba,

we also had deep fried corn, I forgot to take a picture but they were like really

 skinny eggrolls with whole kernel corn inside.

(I was hoping for something similar to creamed corn fritters)

The stairs led to the entrance of the karaoke place.
(Cat karaoke is what I decided to call it) 

Random picture of all the hats for sale at the store Homac
(home improvement type store).

And this is PART of the mushroom section at the Universe grocery store,
I love mushrooms but have no idea where to even start with this many options!

Up next: A Successful Hunt!