Japan Week 28

February 8-14, 2010

With Winter operating full speed ahead, any event in the area is a wonderful excuse to get out of the house and enjoy some fresh air (even if it is mighty cold air!). I had gotten an email about a lantern festival happening in the Hirosaki Castle Park and I read that the festival ran all week and through the weekend. Since it's usually easier to find things to do on the weekend we opted to go on Tuesday! When we got to the park we were slightly confused because it was dark, the path was not cleared at all and there really were not any signs of a festival but we explored anyway because it was very pretty. Later we encountered a few teams of people constructing snow sculptures and we confirmed that I read the email wrong. So although it wasn't exactly a festival, it was definitely a nice night in the park and seeing how these things are actually built. It might have been a little nicer though if we weren't trekking through deep sludgy snow.
Hirosaki Castle gate. Look at how huge I look! I was clearly dressed for a cold night out!

One of the "lanterns"

Now we understand, this is building week, not the actual festival!

The Shinkansen!! The Shinkansen is the bullet train which was the fastest human transport train in the world until recently, China built a faster one. Aomori is currently obsessed with the Shinkansen because starting in December they will have Service through Aomori, which means we can get to Tokyo in about 3 hours, instead of 8!

Since we had seen the festival being constructed, we figured we should go back and see the final product. Friday night we went back to Hirosaki Castle park and enjoyed the festival and a long walk through the park, it was snowing and beautiful!!
This snow wall was made from the snow they cleared from the path. There is 1 candle in each little alcove. There were many of these walls all over the path! Eric thinks it's a brilliant plan for luminaries because if they start an unwanted fire, the snow will just melt and put it out! This a very large building made of snow, it's hollow inside and filled with lights! I really wish we had seen them building this! It was similar to ones in Sapporo, only not as large.

Hirosaki Castle at Night, look the moat is frozen!

One of many lantern villages. The park was glowing in every direction, it was beautiful!

I also have to tell you about the funniest thing we saw at the festival but I didn't get a chance to snap a photo. This time of year it's very common to see parents pulling their kids a long on sleds which we saw a lot of at the festival. It's also common to see kids pull stunts to make their ride more enjoyable, like flipping out of them backwards . . one child in particular was hilarious! The dad was pulling the sled along and the little boy was laying on the sled on his stomach with his face in the snow! If he wasn't laughing so hard I would have thought he was dead. I think he was eating a lot of snow, and everyone found it quite surprising!

Saturday was Scrabble night!! I recently was talking about how much I love Scrabble and our friend Hal got it from one of his friends and we got a small group together to play a few games! We had a lot of fun! Hal also taught us another game you can play with the tiles and not the board, he calls it DIG and I actually thought it was more fun than scrabble itself! We had a nice low key night out with friends!

Sunday was Valentines Day!! Happy St. Valentine Day! (As we say in Japan). Some of you may have seen that the Good Morning America show (on Sunday) did a story on how Valentine's day is celebrated in Japan. Here, Valentines day is actually just for men. The girls/women give small gifts and dark chocolate to the boys they like. Everything is still pink, red and purple and covered with hearts and sparkles too. Then one month later on March 14, is White Day. Which is when the boys reciprocate (but only if they like you back) and they give the girl(s) that gave them a valentine gift a small gift and white chocolate. So, not only do the girls have to go first to the boy they have a crush on them, they have to wait a whole month to find out if they like you back. Can you imagine the high school drama involved?? eek! I'm glad I'm experiencing it as a married woman!

Here is a small article and silly cartoon I found when reading up about it:
http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2007/02/valentines_day_.html

Something else worth mentioning. . . It has been snowing buckets!! It started snowing on Friday just after Eric left from lunch and it hasn't stopped!! I have no idea how much snow we have gotten because we don't actually have a local weather man. All I know is that for the past two months they have been plowing the roads 3 times a day and the snow removal trucks come about every week to take the snow out of the neighborhoods and commercial areas and dump it in the rice fields. Now, the plows are coming 5 times a day that I am aware of, and I have seen the snow removal trucks in our neighborhood EVERY DAY for 5 days straight. Although people's yards are beginning to blend together as the snow is now above many of the fences (5 feet high) and shoveling the car out is a royal pain. . . the roads are really okay. They are so well prepared and well equipped to handle this much snow it is unbelievable. I think about the struggles people are having in the Mid-west and the East Coast of the states because the cities just can't handle the amount of snow they are getting and I am SO thankful!