First of the Street Festivals!

Rain showers occur in much wider intervals now that the rainy season is coming to an end here in Tokyo. Instead of daily downpours, we’ve only had two rain showers in the past week. The hazy, now bluish skies have filled Tokyo with a party spirit. Street festivals of all shapes and sizes bring neighbors flooding into the streets dressed in Yukata (traditional summer kimono). It's almost unbearably muggy now that the rain has stopped. Today, for example, it was 88 degrees with 77% humidity. In this weather, your clothes cling to you while you feel your sweat run down the little valley of your lower back. I love it.

Jonathan and I have attended two of these street festivals so far. The first was a little block party in our neighborhood. Our Japanese friends invited us to dinner at their apartment before the festival. We each brought something to share. I brought parfaits for dessert. Our friends went crazy for them.

This was our dinner. On the right is a normal garden salad. In the white dish to the left of the salad is pickled sprouts. In the round dish behind the sprouts you will find large soba noodles dressed in greens, fish sausage, omelet, and bonito (fish) flakes, and topped with a very tasty soy sauce. To the right of the noddle dish is my favorite Japanese food, tonkatsu (very tender fried pork). To the left of the noodles are gyoza, otherwise known as pot-stickers. Finally, in the the white cups is a freshly made avocado soup. It was all very fresh and delicious.

We all sat around a little coffee table in this very nice Japanese house. Even the nicest Japanese houses are small by American standards. Japanese people typically don't have ovens, dryers, dinner tables, beds, etc.

The infamous Natto. Riako, my hilarious Japanese friend, thought it would be fun to make me try Natto (fermented soy beans). Natto is a favorite breakfast food in Japan, but it is widely booed by foreigners as the most disgusting food on earth. The vile beans are covered in a mucus-like gel that is secreted from the beans as they rot. Mix a little soy sauce and mustard in and you have yourself a Japanese palate pleaser. I refuse to eat it, but Riako seemed so set on making me try it I couldn't let her down. I ate one bean, and was able to control my gag reflex.

Notice the slime dripping from these sticky, frothy, once green beans.

On the way to the festival.

Okinawan street performers. Okinawa has a very rich cultural heritage. It actually wasn't a part of Japan until the 70's, so although they share a lot of the same culture, they are seem to have their own spin on things, like this dance for example. They also speak an almost unintelligible dialect of Japanese.



Here's a video of the dancers.

The Okinawan good luck dragon/lion/dog came out for a dance.If the dog bites you, you'll have good luck for a year!

Here we are posing with the fire department. Notice the girl in the Yukata...she jumped in the picture and kept yelling for us to make sure we got her broken leg in the frame.

Here a street performer sang in the street for the children.

Watch the video.

These children were playing a popular festival game where they try to catch these little gold fish with a shell made from the same stuff that we use to make ice cream cones, before the shell disintegrates. They get to take the fish that they catch home with them.

Riako's brother, Takuma. Jonathan loves this guy.