Summer festivals

Summer festivals are fun. Summer festivals are many. Summer festivals are best enjoyed with beer and sashimi.

Unfortunately for me, the summer is now over but I did make it to some festivals, of course. It's hard not to go to them, since there is a festival just about every day during the summer here. I have yet to go to some of the really BIG festivals, as where I live the festivals are rather small because of the small towns and villages. There are no big cities. However, the feel of these small festivals is really nice and you can go to some of them and be the only foreigner there. These are usually the biggest events in the villages all year, so everyone is out and having a good time. There's lots of cheap food vendors, games and fireworks. Fun times!



some street performances


Goto sensei!




Japanese kids love bugs...



Now that summer is drawing to a close it's time for me to get back to work. Personally this is fine in my book. Japanese people have to work over summer break anyway and students usually come to school every day for studying and exercise/sport clubs. It's really not much of a summer vacation here in a Japan. It mostly just means that they don't serve school lunch, which is awful. I just wind up eating cup noodles or some other instant, just add water foodstuff. The first day of class was a welcome event as I was finally treated to a cheap, healthy and delicious school lunch again... my favorite, curry and rice! YAY