April Adventures Across Japan Phase 3: Profit!

Aomori Day 5: Shichinohe & Towada

Time to explore more of my new home... and teach Ashley how to walk to the Shinkansen station because I would be at work when she had to leave. We lucked out and got another nice day and made our way down to the station. Sadly, there were no displays at that time (when I'd been there a week earlier, there had been a plethora of mobiles and some kimonos on display. I think there were for Girls' Day).

Friday afternoon... It's warm, but not warm enough for a/c... I knew I should have worn a skirt today...

IT'S TOO HOT FOR PANTS! Well, not quite. Anyway, I'm finding it too warm to concentrate on anything terribly productive, so... I'm gonna start another post that I will update as we go along... (well, I'll tag subsequent posts as "NATURE" so you can follow along... )

NATURE!

I hope to see lots of neat stuff this coming weekend (but I'm not gonna tell you where I'm going in case the weather is shite and all I get is rained on!)

Here are some things that I've found worth noting so far...

While heading to the exit of the Hirosaki castle grounds, I spied this one branch of red in among the green...

These leaves just could not wait to get their red on...

Aki Matsuri (lit: Fall Festival)

Hey folks, the Hirosaki weekend posts took a week to get up cuz of all the classes I had (still no internet at home except for on the iphone... which I can't make into a hotspot unless I jailbreak it... it may come to that...)

Anyhoo, ever since going back to Shichinohe, I joined Tim and David (fellow ALTs, but both are from California) and started some informal Taiko drumming lessons in the Shinmatchi neighbourhood of Shichinohe. Good times were had (I shall add a picture of the shed we were practicing in, I just forgot to load it on the flash drive) a super busy weekend resulted from it!

Thursday, September 6th, all the neighbourhoods gathered in town and competed (I'm not sure what we were competing for... but we got lots of cheers for being the group with the most gaijin... however that didn't get us enough points to win. Maybe next year.) After the winners were announced, a much better taiko group performed and put us all to shame.

Suited up and ready to smack some skins!