Week 21 in Japan: Paper Balloon Festival and Kamakura Festival

      Two festivals in one week so of course it was a pretty great time. On Monday I went to the Paper Balloon Festival near Tazawako Japan. I went with my host family in Japan along with Ryouen and Asahi from China, Nessa who is American, and Ayu who is Japanese. It was around an hour and a half car drive so I slept about half the way there. Basically there was a large area where they were sending balloons up into the sky and that was the festival. There were balloons from various different groups like schools, and companines. Even though I think companies promoted or sponsored some of the balloons there was almost no advertising. The balloons had great designs of various different things like Geisha, mountains, or animals, not things like "First National Bank", haha. There was a lot of food being sold in tents all around the area where the balloons were taking off. Also there were two really big fires that you could stand by to warm up. One cool thing was that the balloons would take off from anywhere there was not a specific zone so you could be as close as you wanted to it when it takes off. There were small balloons and big balloons. The small ones were a lot of times sent of by kids and were maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall. The big ones were very big. I'm not the best at estimating so you can just check out the pictures. The grand finale was pretty cool, 8 different balloons went up at once and there were also some fantastic fireworks which were definitely a surprise. It was a cool festival and it was all free too.

      The second festival I went to was Kamakura, a 10 day festival in Yokote, Japan. Kamakura are snow houses that are similar to igloos so it was basically a snow fort festival. I went by train with Teppei, Karen, Yunseok, and Palguem and we arrived in Yokote at around 3pm for the festival. In various areas in Yokote city there are Kamakura that have been built and also other snow sculputres like a giant horse that you can check out in the pictures below. One cool thing you can do at the festival is go into the snow houses and drink Amazake and eat some food. There are various Kamakura you can go in to warm up and chat. We took our shoes off at the entrance and sat around a little fire where they cooked a little bit of food for us. And we drank some Amazake mixed with rice wine. You can hangout in the Kamakura, have a snack, and a drink and it's all free too. It was interesting to make small talk with Japanese because that's not somehting that happens everyday unless you really go seeking it. Japanese people are not shy but they don't make small talk with strangers as often as other places in the world maybe do. The festival was great and I'm really happy I went.

     I leave for Tokyo this Saturday so the next blog will be late, but when it comes it will be awesome. I'll be going to Disney Land, Disney Sea, Studio Ghibli Museum, Shinjuku, Odaiba, and the Pokemon Center in Tokyo. I'm really excited. Thanks for reading, and check out the pictures!.. Oh also there is a video this week. I think I may try to add a video whenever I can from here on out. We'll see!

 Here we are at the festival. From left to right it's Teisuke, Ayu, Nessa, Ryouen, Asahi, and me.

 Me in front of a balloon with Son Goku on it. There was a big variety of different balloons.

 Yaay my first video for the blog. Sorry it's not perfect, I wasn't paying attention too closely to the camera, mainly just enjoying the moment ;)

 Here's a picture from the Kamakura festival that I I took. This is at the elementary school in the city. My friend Marina who is from Yokote said she used to go to this school and made the little Kamakura six different years.

 Here is a picture of Yunseok outside of a Kamakura fort. This one I think is like mid sized. At night there would be maybe a host inside that would serve you something warm to drink. Also a blanket or something to sit on and maybe a little fire too. Also that sign on the right says Kamakura.

 Again at the school with mini Kamakura. From left to right is: Palguem(Korea), Karen(Tawain), Teppei(Japan), Me, Yunseok(Korea).

 During the day the Kamakura are sometimes empty accept for a lightbulb at the top (not sure how they exactly do that). You can easily stand up inside of the kamakura. You can't see it well but we all had good smiles for this picture because the guy we asked to take the picture was getting snowballs thrown at him by his cute little kid.

 Pausing for a picture, I think we were on the way to visit the school during the day at this point.

 I can't remember the story on the hat I was wearing but they were offering for people to try it on. I think I felt cooler than I looked, but that's whats important right?