Hyakumangoku Parade

The big event for the Saturday of the Hyakumangoku Festival is the parade, which starts at the train station and ends at Kanazawa castle, next to Kenroku'en. After we went to Kenroku'en in the morning to see iris, we walked back downtown and had lunch at an Indian restaurant which turned out be be really good and have large portions. Most of the staff was actually Indian, and therefore spoke English, which was a nice touch (the English menus conspicuously were not full of questionable translations too).

We ate so much and spent so long doing it that when we were finished the festivities for the beginning of the parade had already commenced, and thousands of people crowded the intersection in front of the train station. We found that this was fairly pointless, as nearly every angle from which one might possibly watch the taiko drummers and the like was obstructed by platforms for TV cameras and sound equipment. It was clear that the TV audience had priority - sidewalks were roped off and then left empty as routes for TV personnel to walk back and forth while the police kept the people there back against the buildings. So, what do the Japanese do in this situation? They pull out their cell phones and other portable TV devices, and watch the proceedings on TV while they stand where they easily could have seen it live were the TV dudes not in the way. Classic Japan.

The media blocked the view

Watching the TV version of the event right in front of them

Standing there wasn't working for us, so we went further down the parade route and found a shaded spot where we could see well and sit down when we wanted to.

The firemen / acrobats from an earlier post performed during the parade.

Bellhops's Union marching band (probably not)

Many individuals in the parade had clearly fortified themselves for duty with alcohol, but this being Japan that was OK / expected during festival participation.

Some aspects of the parade were clearly still being worked out during the parade - tech crew stopped by to draw marks on places where different groups should perform. This is an unusually large tech group for the situation as one guy with chalk appears to be all that the was required.

"Samurai" were in evidence. Don't mind the swastikas, the Japanese had them first.

As were female noble types. Anyone who wants to can sign up to be samurai or noblewoman in the parade, and they provide costumes. People have said that the whole process is long and boring though - we'll probably not sign up for that.

Demons walked the streets, with nearby priest to keep things under control.

The official stand-in for the long-dead lord being celebrated by the parade

The parade moved very slowly, with large and conspicuous gaps between groups. We've heard that this is usual, though I don't understand why. They definitely could have sped the whole thing up dramatically without losing anything. I'm sure the people in costumes would appreciate a 2-3 hour parade instead of a 5-6 hour one. They were probably performing for judges or something along the way, though it was quite annoying to sit for 20 minutes between groups. We watched for several hours before experiencing parade fatigue and heading home. Worth seeing the once, though we might just have a cookout at home next year, and watch the TV version over the internet. Check out pictures and several videos on Flikr.

Hyakumangoku Lanterns

Last weekend we attended Kanazawa's Hyakumangoku festival (translates roughly to 150-million-kilograms-of-rice festival), which is probably the largest Kanazawa festival of the year. It is the celebration of the entrance of Lord Toshiie Maeda, Daimyo, into Kanazawa. The area around Kanazawa that he was now ruler of produced hyakumangoku of rice, which is why the festival is so named. That was several hundred years ago, but they still use the excuse to throw a serious party every year. There are a few different parts of the festival celebrated over a Friday night and the whole day Saturday, and even a little on Sunday. We attended two parts, which we're going to break into two posts.

One big thing done on Friday night is to float lanterns down the Asano river for the aesthetic appreciation of several thousand people. We biked downtown after work and grabbed some takeout, then walked over to one of the older districts of Kanazawa, which features numerous temples and houses constructed in the traditional style. The Asano river runs by this district, and has grassy banks on both sides. Apparently they dredge the river mud up into winding banks inside the canal walls to speed the water flow and create pleasing curved paths for the lanterns to follow as they float down the river. The lanterns mostly come from elementary school students, with some larger lanterns in fanciful shapes being produced by sports teams and clubs higher up the educational food chain. It was very crowded in some areas, but we just kept walking until we found enough space to sit and watch without being too much disturbed, where we ate our burgers (Ana got a teriyaki burger - does that appease the sense of eating Asian in Asia?) and watched the lanterns float by in the darkness. Pictures available on Flikr.

River at Sunset

Main pavilion and lanterns

Taiko

Kenroku'en in Early Summer / Iris

Last year we read about an iris festival, but didn't manage to find out exactly where it was or to attend. This year we did a bit more planning and preparation, and determined that there are two really big iris festivals in Japan, but neither is close by. As it would cost us many hundreds of dollars for the train tickets to go see them and being short of evidence of them being worth it, we decided to hold off and just go see the iris at Kenroku'en, which we'd not yet seen anyway. They have a few pretty significant plantings, which are easy to miss when they're not in bloom. They turned out to only feature one variety of iris, which was a little disappointing, but the weather was perfect and the admission free, so it would be silly to complain. Pictures follow and can be found on Flikr.

The Rose Garden

Every so often, I get together with some local girls to hang out and knit. As the weather has been gorgeous, we wanted to have an outdoor afternoon of nice weather and yarn. Here in Kanazawa, there is a rose garden fairly close to home, which I'd never been to before, and we ended up going there. This garden isn't huge, but it does have a large assortment of great roses.


We walked around the garden for awhile before finally sitting down and knitting under a tree. My camera's batteries had died by that point, so we have just the pictures of the roses. I don't have much to say about them, except that they were gorgeous, smelled great, and it was a great way to spend the afternoon, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

More KTC Advertisments Featuring Ana

We've shown you some promotional materials for Ana's school featuring Ana before, but they've produced some new materials and we figured we'd share.

First up is the front page of one of their information booklets, upon which they have carefully placed their one black and one female engineering instructors.

Next up, the front of another information booklet. I call your attention to the picture in the bottom center - the one with the rowboat? Yeah, they take students out of class for that for days at a time to send them to one of our seminar houses to teach them teamwork by making them row together. I personally might not publicize that.

I include the rear of the same booklet for one reason: they have the full faculty and a bunch of students posing in front of a school building. You'd think it would be, say, their own school building. In this case, you'd be wrong. That's a KIT building, which KTC students to the best of my knowledge do not take classes in. However, they've remedied that with this years' photo - we took one a few days ago in front of the KTC building.

We could probably puzzle out of a good portion of this, but it is more fun just to imagine and theorize.

This portion of the newsletter brought back some wonderful Christmas memories. They had students from Singapore Polytechnic visiting in December, and for some reason decided to hold a "traditional American Christmas dinner" for them, as a time for students of both schools to hang out. First off, they ordered a Thanksgiving dinner, not Christmas. Second, they ordered 12 12lb turkeys for about 30 people to eat. 144lb / 30 people = 4.8 pounds per person. Third, the entire meal was stone cold when served because the facilities for cooking could not accommodate all of the turkeys at once, and then it was stored it in the fridge all day before serving it after school. On the plus side, Ana brought home a nearly intact turkey in a clean garbage bag afterward and we ate off it for days.

Utatsuyamakoen Visit

Utatsuyamakoen is a park outside Kanazawa. It is actually pretty close to our place (maybe 30 minutes by bike) but we hadn't known about it until introduced by a friend of Ana's, who also showed us the way there. Last weekend we were experiencing one of the 10 clear sunny days that seem to be annually allotted to Kanazawa and biked out there to see what we could see, picnic, and generally enjoy the weather.

Really nice day in Kanazawa, at the bridge where we met up with Ana's friend

Along the way there along the river we could see the mountains behind the foothills that normally fill our horizon. There are some pretty serious peaks out there. Note the comprehensive snow cover halfway through May. The ride next to the river was very nice, but we were apparently too busy enjoying it to take any pictures. After reaching the town below Utatsuyamakoen we bought lunch supplies at their supermarket and locked our bikes up at their bike stand.

Then did a little walking through a bamboo forest...

...past a graveyard....

...and a shrine...

...before reaching the park that apparently we only have this picture of.

The park itself turned out to be very large indeed, with a multi-story building with bathrooms, ice cream, a viewing area, etc, and acres of grass along with several formal gardens in I believe it said the Belgian style. Not sure what that was about but everything was expansive and many people were out enjoying it. We put down our tarp and had our lunch. The interesting thing about lunch is that Japanese golden eagles frequent the park, and will do their best to steal your lunch. I was having trouble believing it until one of them stooped on us and basically flew between our heads while our cringing apparently covered whatever food item it had been targeting. After that we were quite careful not to expose or hold up food to attract these birds, which were large enough that I did not care to debate the ownership of food items with them. Shadows from overhead made us jumpy for a while. After we finished, however, it was interesting to watch the birds attack the lunches of people less careful than us - there were several rather spectacular strikes where the bird visibly got away with something good, which they hadn't managed from us.

After lunch we hung out and chatted and enjoyed the weather some more, eventually switching to the shade. Despite the shaded ours and our liberal applications of sunscreen, we were all sunburned to some extent, though it mostly tanned out instead of peeling, which I think everyone can agree is the preferable outcome. The park is a little bit far away for frequent use, but with nice views and lots of grass it makes a nice picnic spot for an afternoon and it was a nice relaxing time, before it gets really hot and humid out.

There were some more nice views of Kanazawa on the way back, too.

Golden Week Trip (Day 5)

We rose bright and early to catch the first shuttle bus to town. Breaking camp proved easier and faster than we'd been anticipating, so we had some time to hang out by the beach before heading out. We then took the ferry to the local train station to grab the train to Hiroshima Station followed by the Shinkansen to Okayama.

Shinkansen

The reason that we were going to Okayama was Koraku'en, one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, along with Kenroku'en in Kanazawa and another one somewhere outside Tokyo. Okayama is on the Shinkansen line between Hiroshima and Osaka, so we were going to be passing it anyway, and figured why not stop and see something instead of just coming directly home?

We stuffed most of the heaviest stuff we were carrying into coin lockers at Okayama Station, but the lockers were almost entirely sold out and we thus toted around, among other things, sleeping bags that we had no particular purpose for that day. Dumping the heavy stuff was key, though.

In Okayama they pretty much just assume you're here for the garden and signs leading to it are easy to come by. The walk from the station is around 15 minutes and isn't complicated. When we got close to Koraku'en itself we discovered that the local neighborhood there had a festival going on, but we ignored that for the time being and moved on to the garden.

I'm pretty sure this was festival-related.

Koraku'en is probably not much bigger than Kenroku'en but it looks and feels expansive compared to it. While Kenroku'en has a lot of little areas all abutting each other, Koraku'en has enormous grass fields separating the different garden elements, giving the whole place a much wider and more open feeling. It also appears to be more coherent a design - Kenroku'en has some mess and disorganization where elements are individually stunning but do not necessarily draw strength from their proximity. Koraku'en felt to me to be more like a Western formal garden, with carefully trimmed shapes, lots of grass, obviously unnatural (though quite pleasant to look at) water features, and since most Japanese women walk around during the day with frilly umbrellas and sometimes white gloves, the whole thing felt rather Victorian, despite the bulk of the garden being undeniably Japanese.

Large grassy areas that you cannot walk on

Streams meandering around the meadow

Ponds and islands were not the focus of this garden, but it had to have some

We had plenty of time between trains, so we got to see every part of the garden. We even stopped to dangle our toes in the water in the little house devoted to that purpose.

There's a time and a place for toe-dangling, I guess

After viewing our fill in Koraku'en, we went back into the neighborhood that was having the festival to look for lunch, and immediately found a restaurant overlooking the river that looked interesting, with the cheesy English name of Natural Mystic. We're pretty sure, in retrospect, that the restaurant is vegetarian, because the tasty looking burgers they were advertising (and that we both ordered) turned out not to be meat. That said, it was in fact tasty enough that I'd eaten halfway through mine before I even noticed and I'd order it again if given the chance. The hamburger buns were also the best we've had in years, better even than one usually gets in the States - chewy and flavorful with a lightly crunchy exterior. For a couple who ordinarily makes hamburgers on thick-sliced white bread because buns aren't sold in Japan, these were especially nice to have. The salad that came with the burger was clearly very fresh produce - all the vegetables in both the burger and the salad had superior crunch and flavor.

Better than a significant percentage of all-beef burgers I've eaten

Bit of a hippie place but whatever it was good

Crunch and flavor aside, Ana was not as thrilled as I was with lunch (she objects to fake meat products on the grounds that if you're a vegetarian you should just suck it up and not pine for meat or meat substitutes - I don't necessarily agree) and she swiftly conducted us to a dessert cafe right down the road to find a supply of that which makes everything better in her life - sugar. The place was called the Plywood Cafe, and like Natural Mystic it was definitely a little fruity. However, the desserts turned out to be amazing, my confection was one of the best desserts I have ever had, and exhibited a wonderful subtlety and balance between sour grapefruit and the sweetness of everything else.

Ana was troubled and required desserts

Superior confection

Desserts consumed, we headed over to Okayama Castle, which is adjacent to the garden. Like Hiroshima castle, it is also a replica, though Okayama's castle was destroyed by incendiaries rather than an atomic bomb. The usual museum exhibits were supplemented by a display of extremely detailed historical information relating to this specific area in Japan during the times of turmoil when Japan was beginning to shed its feudal structure for that of a more modern state. I felt it was a lot like "and so-and-so begat so-and-so" except that instead of begat it was "rebelled against" or "suppressed the rebellion of" but Ana liked it and I didn't mind it, so since we had the time it wasn't bad.

Okayama castle 2.0

After all that, we still had two hours until our next train left, so we found a park bench by the river and I snoozed while Ana read her book. About about an hour before our train, we walked back to the station to head back to Kanazawa and work the next day.

Ana felt it was very important to mention that shortly after beginning to walk back to Okayama Station, someone on the other side of the river started playing bagpipes. They weren't a beginner but they weren't expert either. It was fairly surreal to walk around in Japan to the sound of bagpipes.