Birthday weekend report...

Dear Gramma,
I am doing well out here in the small town of Shichinohe. How are you? 
I hope you're doing great. I miss you a whole bunch.
I first wanted to thank you very *very* much for the generous birthday present. I put it to good use during my birthday weekend! It happened to be a long weekend in Japan, as well as Canada, so my birthday was a holiday here, too. I like to think of it being a holiday in those countries cuz it’s my birthday and I’m just that special.

七戸町秋祭り (Shichinohe town fall festival) year 2: electric boogaloo.

The fall festival seems to be the largest one that this town celebrates, it lasts about 4 days and everyone except for my office and the supermarket seems to shut down early/for the weekend. Not that surprising given how many farmer's fields there are all over the place. Hooray for a good harvest!

ラッセラー! ラッセラー! Here's my post on ねぶた!

Hey hey everybody!

It's still summer vacation, so I have office days all this week. Which means.... time for a prompt update! Friday night was a work party. It was a really good time with my co-workers, dinner followed by karaoke. Thankfully it didn't go terribly late, and I wasn't hurting *too* much the next morning from all the umeshuu (plum wine) that I had to drink (it's like CANDY!). I met newly arrived Kyle and we drove down to the shinkansen station to meet up with Jenny and her friend who was due to arrive at 8 am.

Off we went to Aomori city for a day of adventure and to jump in the Nebuta Festival parade!

Hokkaido Holiday!

Chelsea and I headed out to meet up with a bunch of folks in Hachinohe before it was time to board the overnight ferry. We all met in a ramen shop and I had my first bowl of Japanese ramen. I know. I know. Why did I wait so damn long? Well, it was delicious and worth the wait. Then we were off to Hokkaido for the Sapporo Snow Festival (雪祭り).

Megumi, Ben, Dan and Erica

Rokkasho Salmon Festival

Greetings and salutations, true believers. Welcome to my post about the Salmon Festival in Rokkasho (just in case you missed the title...)

I drove up to the coast to visit with some fellow Canucks (Tom and Ashley from BC) and catch some fishes with my baaaare haaaaaands. Now, the salmon count was down this year, so it wasn't a 'salmon catch' per se, but it was a good time. As I was saying, I drove up to their place and met up with them Saturday night. Tom was working in the tourist booth helping English speaking folks get their bearings and had already done one round of catching with Charlotte earlier that day. So, when I got up there, it was time to prep the fishies and make up some dinner! Tim (my neighbouring JET) was also in town to visit with his friend Juliann, and Katie was in town as well. Quite the crew! Now, on to the fiiiiiish:

Here we have what will soon become delicious pesto salmon.

Beef and Garlic adventures!

Greetings and salutations! Tim, Katie, Juliann and I set off for the wilds of Takko for the Beef and Garlic festival last Sunday. Here's the deal: you bring some food & cooking utensils (we picked up some 'shrooms and yakisoba) then head down to Takko-machi. Grab a grill, buy some of the beef and garlic available and toss it on.

You can tell they were expecting a good turn out from the base... heh heh heh

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!

Mmmmm takoyaki...

Because I didn`t bring a lunch, I got to go and check out a festival in Shichinohe town central park yesterday. While I missed seeing the Go Buster, I did get to see some taiko drumming. The video`s pretty long, so I won`t post it just yet...the upload speeds at work are... not so hot.

Anyway, the food was super yummy. I had some onigiri, a few different flavours (balls of rice with stuff inside, wrapped in seaweed)... but I didn`t take a photo.