Tanabata Festival

Last month our little town celebrated Tanabata by hanging these streamers from bamboo poles down main street. The girls loved going through the streamers. We went last year during the day and it was not nearly as exciting as it is at night with all of the decorations lit up.

After walking up and down the street we got what we thought was ice cream, but was really more like an icy. The man scooped up a white center of "ice cream" and then used his paddle to put 6 different colors and flavors around the outside. Yum, yum.

This is perhaps the largest Hydrangea that I have ever seen and it is right outside our door.

 Alice got 5 teeth last month and cloths pins are a fairly harmless teething option.

Misawa Festival

I realized today that we are about a month behind on our pictures and updates. These picture come from a parade we went to last month. We found some sweet seats along the road where there was not another American to be seen. It's fun to really feel like you live in another country, but is often hard to capture when living on base. From what I learned beforehand, this parade was the dance parade. Groups like this one below danced in unison to Japanese or American pop music while walking down the street. It was like being in a musical or perhaps watching a boys band.

Helen and I were lucky enough to meet this large headed person. Jane was really excited, as you can see from her lunging position in her stroller.

Here is a group of boys eating street food that were across the street. They had a ton of fun eating their street food and cat-calling to all the people in the parade. I had initially felt guilty about taking people's pictures here, but at the air show a couple weeks ago we had our pictures taken enough that I was curious as to what we had done to deserve the paparazzi treatment. Had Ryan started a successful singing career? maybe acting? some sort of night job with lots of hype?

Here is another dancing group, most of the groups we made up of children. This was probably my favorite one.

I love these hats! It's like carrying your umbrella with you all the time.

This float, one of only four that I remember seeing, carried a bunch of big white root vegetables. The man at the back handed them out to spectators. I guess that we didn't look like we would know what to do with such a gift, so we didn't get one. I think that it would be really great if in the US they had floats where they handed out vegetables, you know, like eggplant, or turnips. Probably it would just end up a giant food fight though.

This float was the loudest float. There were people banging on big drums and a wild man with a sort of tambourine setting the rhythm for them.

Here is one of the other floats. You may not know it, but Miss Veedol, the red plane you see in replica was the first plane to cross the Pacific Ocean non-stop back in 1931.