Sunday, May 10, 2009

Children's Day and Kite Festival

Ok, Ok, I know it has been a while since our last posting. I guess we got caught up in every day living and didn't do anything too exciting. But that all changed last week with the Japanese holidays called Golden Week. It is basically 4 national holidays all strung together and most people have the week off of work and school. One of those days is called Children's Day. On this day everyone hangs fabric carp from a line or pole. I'm not sure of the history for this. At Sagamigara river (check out the earlier blog on this river) they celebrate Children's Day with a kite festival. We went a couple of days before the festival to check out how the kite's were coming along. They build these huge kites out of bamboo and rope ahead of time and then cover them with decorated paper on the day they fly them. Here's a picture of Madeleine standing in front of one of frames:


Pretty big kite! They also built some kind of traditional straw hut. Vanessa and Maddie were ready to move in!




At the river, they strung some large carp across the expanse. These things were very large and with the strong winds looked beautiful flying in the sky.






After checking out the scene, we took a walk around the area. Along the river they have many rice fields mixed in amongst the houses. They have irrigation systems all around. We came across a monument of some sort with an old concrete pipe. It looked like a good opportunity for a photo of our beautiful Maddie!


On the day of the festival our friends who live right next to the river had a little party. Unfortunately, it was a rainy day with no wind. We still had a good time eating and visiting with our friends. Maddie and I got there early and walked around the festival while it was only sprinkling. We saw some of the kites up in the air. Since there was no wind, the people who built them would grab the long ropes and take off running to get them to fly. The kites looked great! But when the runners ran out of running room the kites would fall to the ground. Some of the people had to scatter as they came down! Our friends told us they saw a group fly their kite by pulling it with a truck. Here is one in the air:


We came to the main area of the festival where they had some kites on display. They looked great with the paper on them. There were some costumed ladies doing a synchronized dance to traditional music when we arrived. Maddie really enjoyed their dancing!



This is the one that Maddie was standing in front of in the first picture at top:



We had a good time. This happened to be May 5th. So we also had to celebrate Cinco de Mayo! We had some margaritas at our friend's house and then later that night we all went hunting for a mexican restaurant. Since it was a holiday, many restaurants were closed. Luckily for us, mexican food is popular in the area. After two failed attempts, we found one open and had a very good dinner. Sorry, no photos of that. Thanks for reading and Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!

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