My first yukata experience...

Friday night my friend Tomo took me to a shopping mall nearby. The mall was huge!  It has been a while since I've gone to such a shopping mall.  I am always seeing fabulous clothing in the stores of Japan; however, more often than not it would be way out my price range.  So instead of trendy clothing, I decided to put my shopping money towards my very own yukata.  

I had no idea how difficult a decision it would turn out to be.  They were all sooo beautiful.  We went to one store and I found one I liked, but since the store was towards the entrance we decided to see what else we could find because we could always go back.  At the department store there were even more to choose from.  Each time I thought I found the one, I would find another I liked even better.  But I kept thinking about the yukata at the first store.  Since I wasn't actually trying them on, it seemed okay that we just took pictures of me holding them up so it would be easier to remember what they looked like for comparison.

We went back to the first store, and I couldn't quite remember which one it was.  I did however find 3 prospects, and was able to try them on and get a few pictures for comparison.

First there was the black with white and silver flowers and little bits of magenta in the flowers...

The second yukata I tried on is the one I chose, so I will show it last.  The third was a black with blue, teal, and silver flowers also with hints of magenta.  This one we tried with two different obi.

But the winner was the black with pink, white and purple flowers and lots of green leaves, as well as silver outlines of flowers.  The obi is magenta on one side and silver on the other, and as shown in all the pictures there are several ways it can be worn to feature one color, the other or both equally.

Monday night we are heading to Otsu for the big fireworks display on Biwa Lake.  The professor has a home there as well, and takes the lab members each year.  From what I hear it is huge, 10,000 shots will be fired over the lake!  This might make up for missing July 4th back home (except for not getting to hang out at the timber with the Stines, of course)! Perhaps it will be an opportunity for me to wear my new yukata :)

Today was a good day.  My neighbor works at one of the hospitals in the area that serves both cities of Iwade and Kinokawa and today they put on a health fair.  There were all sorts of demonstrations and booths.  The EAD and CPR demonstration was great to watch.  Although, it was in Japanese so I really didn't know what they were saying.  The most I got from it was for CPR they use 2 chest compressions to 3 rescue breaths.  From my days of Life Guard certification and white water rafting, I have seen that ratio change from 15 compressions:2 breaths to 5 compressions:1 breath.  Does anyone know what it currently is in the States?  We also got a tour of the hospital.  I learned they are known for there gastroenterology research and care.  

First they showed us the deluxe patient room.  It is hard to tell with the curtain, but it had a very nice private bathroom and seemed much larger than most hospital rooms I have visited, it also had a kithenette and lounge area.  This room goes for about 16,000 yen per day ($240), but a standard room is around 6300 yen per day ($80).

Next they took us to see one of their ultrasound machines.  They gave a demonstration showing the abdomen of another hospital employee.

We also saw a demonstration in the endoscopy lab.

The last instrumentation was their mammography unit.  There was no demonstration for this one, of course, though they explained the procedure and showed us some films.

Our very last stop was the basement. There are 2 black cylinders between the concrete in the left and right of the picture below.  There are 80 of these spread out underneath the hospital to reduce the shock from earthquakes.  From the diagrams they showed us, those cylinders look like they are flexible and allow the ground to move from side to side to absorbing the impact with little disruption to the building above.

After the hospital fair I met with a volunteer Japanese tutor for my first lesson.  A little late considering I only have 2 weeks left in Iwade (so hard to believe).   However, better late than never.  It was quite fun. We just went over some survival Japanese, and the hiragana characters, which I taught myself before coming.  After the lesson we had some coffee and cake with the owner of the little cafe we were at.  The owner, her daughter and I played a card game with the hiragana flashcards.  My tutor laid them all out on the table.  She had an accompanying deck, one card with several words for each character.  She would read the words and the first to find the card with the right character got to take the card.  Believe it or not, I actually won!  The score was me:28, the daughter:17, and the cafe owner:4.  My tutor was very proud :)  I will not have another lesson until the end of my last week here in Iwade, as she is going home for the Obon holiday.  But she did give me plenty of homework to work on, and I told her I would try to get all the Katakana characters before we meet again.

Harry Potter and the Kokawa Festival...

On Saturday I took a quick train ride to Wakayama to see the new Harry Potter movie.  I was quite impressed with the theater, very nice and comfy seats (they are assigned by the way).  However, the ticket price for a 3D movie was 2100yen (about $27)!!!  Don't think I will be seeing any more movies while here.  The movie was entertaining but it had been a while since I saw the first part, so it was hard to remember where it left off (also a long while since I read the book).  The theater was in a little shopping complex.  I caved and bought some "Hello Kitty" slippers!  Sooo cute :)

I walked to a different train station to leave from and got some nice views...

Since it was already close to 4pm, I decided to take the train straight to Kokawa (another neighboring town) because they were having their festival this weekend.  The Kokawa temple was the first one I visited when I arrived in Kinokawa (my adventure that ended with the very bad sunburn).  I was quite early for the festivities, but I got to see the vendors setting up and took a stroll to see the temple grounds again.  They were also setting up the floats (which I will mention more of later).  There was a small ceremony going on at the temple, so I watched for a little while.

As I left the temple, I got to see some very nice drum performances.

At this time, the streets were starting to fill with more and more people.   About half the people were dressed in traditional yukata, kind of a summer-weight cotton alternative to a kimono, or jinbei which seemed to be a more casual version, it was a wrap top and shorts but also in the colorful prints (in the second picture below there is a taller girl in light pink towards the right wearing this, and in the third picture the girl on the left).  They were all so beautiful to look at.

I also started to get a little hungry, but what to eat... there were soo many different vendors.  They had takoyaki (if you remember from the Kyoto post), yakisoba, okonomiyaki, these kind of egg sandwiches on a wafer topped with like a teriyaki sauce and mayonaise (I mentioned it from my earlier Kinokawa post, but see the picture below).  I saw the cucumbers on a stick like in Kyoto, also hot dogs, french fries and snow-cones.  Speaking of snow-cones, when I first arrived I was walking by all the vendors and one of the dispensers with several flavors tipped over and I got snow-cone juices all over my feet.  Well, I finally decided on what looked to be meatballs, but turned out to be a rice-ball wrapped in beef, cooked on the skillet and topped with teriyaki sauce and mayonaise.  They seem to put mayonaise on just about everything here, but there is something different about Japanese mayonaise.  Not sure what it is, but it does taste a little different (in a very good way!)

As the evening progressed, the lanterns along the street and all the floats began to light up.

In this last picture you see two of the floats next to each other on the street.  The highlight of the festival... Every 20 minutes or so some guys carrying lanterns would go running up the street blowing whistles to get people out of the way.  This is because they were either pushing/pulling the floats up the street or running quite fast with them downhill while chanting.  Children were seated on them, and it seemed like they had a very good ride.

More beautiful yukata, and some ladies with hairstyles more ornate than others.  Yes, I finally gave in and flashed the peace sign for the picture.  I am posing with a fellow American I met earlier in the day.  Although I am enjoying Japan and the Japanese people are so friendly and welcoming, it felt sooo nice to talk with an American.

There were also games for children.  They are given a small net, and try to collect the floating balls or goldfish into a bowl.  But the netting is very delicate and didn't seem to last very long.

After we had enough walking, which we did for about 3-4 hours just up and down the same street, we ended the evening at a new Italian cafe that just opened near my apartment. The best part is the cappuccino drinks as they make designs with in froth.  The Japanese make everything so pretty and presentable.