Update through the end of June 2011

The next cool thing I did was rice field planting.

 We all started at the same time so it's crazy how fast the little old ladies were, they completely outstripped me and the high-schoolers that were all in the same field.

There I am.  A really cool thought is that I know a lot of the restaurants in Himi buy local rice so potential I have eaten rice that I planted.

Continuing right along with two of the coolest festivals I have ever been to.  First is the kenkayama matsuri which basically translates into the fighting floats festival.  Basically different teams have their own floats with telephone pole sized logs sticking out of the front of them.  Two teams then charge their floats at each other and collide the poles together.  I have no idea how a winner was picked but the whole battle process was pretty darn cool.  The pictures didn't turn out that great so I'm just going to show a short video of the craziness.

The next festival is called the hyakumangoku matsuri.  This festival is a reenactment of Lord Maeda Toshiie entering into Kanazawa Castle in 1583 so the participants are dressed in period costumes and parade around the city before ending at the castle.  Afterwards my friend Ryuichi and I explored around town for a little while until it got dark enough to go back to Kenrokuen Garden to see the light up.

And to finish up this post are a few pictures from a random yakiniku party we had in Masa's parking lot and a beautiful shot from a drive through the mountains. 

Ahhem...Long Time No See...2

Let's continue shall we?  Zack and I made it to Himi and began our more rural adventures. This is the May 1-4 portion of Zack's Golden Week visit.

First adventure was a festival in Takaoka.  It was a little rainy so they just stopped the giant floats right in the middle of the road and covered them with plastic.

When the rain died down.  They took the plastic off and started right back up.

On another day we went to Kanazawa, as that water sign shows.

The very cool Kanazawa train station.

Ninja Temple...like that wasn't going to happen.

Exploring the temple district I found a large stone frog. This picture is for my siblings, hopefully they weren't too young on our walks "to the animals" to remember another big stone frog.

Oyama Shrine with its unusual gate, which was designed by a Dutch architect using elements of European and Asian religious themes.

Kanazawa Castle

Kenrokuen is the famous garden in Kanazawa.  It's supposedly among the top three most beautiful gardens in Japan and I can believe it. 

On another day we went on a biking trip to explore Himi.  At the bottom of a hill we found a sign for castle ruins.  We didn't see anything particularly castle-like when we got to the top but there was a shrine in a glass box. 

Also, the view from the top was great.

On that same bike ride we saw mysterious steps that were too neat looking to pass up.

It led us to some old graves scattered about.

And of course, we couldn't miss the famous Himi clock.

There was Lion Dancing going on around town for the holidays.

At on of the parks there is a large statue.  I liked the hawk sitting on a hawk.  It's almost like he was catching a ride.

This is what rice fields look like before they've been planted. 

One of stops in Tokyo the day Zack left was Asakusa.

A completely random picture to end with.

In summary, Zack and I had a wonderfully fantastic time and saw way more than I thought possible for a week long vacation.  Having visitors gives me an excuse to get out there and see all the sights I wouldn't necessarily get to on my own. 

Long Time No See!

Hey, how’ve you been? Doing well? I sure hope so. I’ve been just dandy. I’ve done a lot and taken many pictures. Sadly, all these months later, I’m just going to do my best to fill you in on the highlights because if I tried to cover everything that has happened during my hiatus I would never catch up. So without further ado: the past half year (or so) of my life.

April 17: Marumage Festival, Gon Gon Festival. The first is a famous festival in Himi where young, unmarried women don the traditional clothes and wig of a married geisha to parade around town and ultimately go to a shrine to pray for a good marriage. Katie and I participated and spent the whole day in that crazy outfit. It was one of the most fun and unique experiences I've had in this country. The second festival is so named for the sound made when you hit a bell. In this case a large temple bell hit with what is essentially a tree trunk. The festival is centered around a competition to see who can hit the bell the most times...I have no idea for what purpose.

I hated that wig by the end. It was really heavy.

As soon as that got us dressed we took pictures before we could do anything to ruin the look.

Group photo: I'm in the back with the special green tasseled wig and Katie is sitting behind the little girl in red on the right side.

I was on interviewed (in Japanese) and in the newspaper and on TV. Many people said they saw me. I was practically a celebrity, all the bystanders wanted my photo. The whole experience was both exhilarating and disconcerting.

This is the temple that we went into and afterwards we came out for the monks (or priests?) to do another ceremony that involved shooting (tiny blunted) arrows and fire. This picture shows the three distinct rows we paraded in.

We finished near a park so of course we took pictures with the cherry blossoms.

Some were perhaps more serious than others.

After changing out of our Marumage clothes Katie and I again teamed up to test our prowess against the Gon Gon bell.

Here's Joe trying his hand at it.

April 28-May 5: Golden Week, Zack visit. Golden Week is this fabulous time of year were within a seven day period there are four national holidays. I don’t know how they fall every year, but this year it worked out that by only taking one day off I had a nice week long vacation during which Zack was able to come visit. If anyone doesn't know Zack he's a one of my best friends from all the way back in kindergarten. Basically we spent part of our time in Tokyo (east side) and the rest in my neck of the woods (west side), we were uber-tourist and saw and as much as we could cram into a weeks worth of vacation. Naturally, it was EPIC!!! I apologize to him for not doing our travels justice with the pictures I'm selecting and the quick blurbs that will accompany. I took a ton of pictures (and made sure to get copies of all of his) so the easiest way for me to start choosing is to select from the experiences that were new and unique for me.

Our first goal was to just scope out the whole of Tokyo so we went to the top of one of the tall (free) buildings and took in the amazing 360 view.

Sadly pictures weren't allowed inside the sword museum. We did get calendars for free though :)

The entrance into the Imperial Palace East Gardens which are open to the general public for free.

The gardens had beautiful flowers and cool old buildings, both of which are nicely shown off in this shot.

A 3D racing game on display in the Sony building. I did better than Zack :P

Asakusa pagoda

Well Blogger keeps giving me an error message whenever I try to add more pictures so I think I'll just call it a night and post this. I'll pick up the next post from our arrival in Himi.