Nagoya Festival 2010

This weekend is the 56th Nagoya Festival commemorating Nagoya's 400th anniversary.       

"This year is Nagoya's long-awaited 400th anniversary. Nagoya, a City of Samurai Warriors which produced many great warriors in feudal times. I want to make people aware of this unique culture and appeal while developing the city in a way that people can feel a closeness with its history. Nagoya Festival started in 1955, and it is the grandest festival to enliven the city in autumn. Of course, the highlight of the festival is the procession of the Three Feudal Lords. The Three Feudal Lords, Nobunaga, Hideyoshim and Ieyasu are accompanied by around 700 arnored warriors and foot soilders in an intense battle as they march around the downtown area displaying a gorgeous and extravagant procession much like those depicted in old picture scrolls. On top of all that, this year we are celebrating the city's 400th anniversary, and on Saturday, the 16th, there will be a Grand Dashi Float Festival and the Kiyosu-goshi Dream Walk. COP 10 will be help in Nagoya in October of this year, which is one of the reasons the world's attention is focused on Nagoya. Let's come together under the refreshing autumn sky and set the mood for Nagoya to go down in history"

Takashi Kawamura,

Mayor of Nagoya 

 My friends and I spent most of yesturday enjoying this wonderful festival. We started off in Sakae around noon. There were manys different attractions here. From street vendors selling tornado fries to a concert in Oasis to a Japanese style fashion show to a chopstick making stall. After visiting all of these, we went back to the location where the parade was going to pass and waited to get our spot. The parade lasted about 2 hours and consisted of many amazing floats, costumes and dancers.

Part 1

Part 2

Summer in October..

Well it certainly feels that way at least. With temperatures still reaching the high 20s, it sure doesn't seem like it's ever going to be fall around here.

Let's see what I’ve been up to lately...

Last week I went to my International Friendship Club and met some nice Japanese students. The club meets on Mondays and Thursdays, so I’ll be going back again tomorrow.

This past weekend I enjoyed celebrating thanksgiving alone in my dorm. I made myself as much as a feast as I could muster; carrots, potatoes, broccoli and the biggest chicken breast I could find. I had no luck finding any turkey unfortunately. It was quite enjoyable.

I also met with some friends to start to plan a trip to Tokyo at the end of the month. We have a few days off at the beginning of November, so it'll work out quite nicely. I'll finally get to ride the 新幹線 (Shinkansen) =D

On Tuesday I had another class in Japanese Foreign Policy. It’s by far the most interesting class I have. The professor is very insightful as well which really helps.

Today I had shortened classes and went with some friends to do some shopping. I got a hair cutting set, so I’ll be doing that some time soon. Should be interesting...

What A Month!

It's so hard to believe that it has already been more than a month now that I've been here. This has been without a doubt the best and worst month of my life. Every day that I spend here I feel better about my surroundings and worse about not being with Jessica. I know that my feelings are going to continue to be torn the longer I'm here. I just hope that my positive feels for this trip continue to outweigh my negative ones for Jessica.


 

PURIKURA Fun XD



This past week was pretty enjoyable. The weather was in the high 20s which was actually fairly refreshing considering most of the month was around 35. It's a nice sign that spring weather is just around the corner. Yay for finally being able to wear jeans and a sweater! This week I had a full load of classes. I had the first class of my course on Japanese Foreign Policy. It was very neat. The professor was apparently somewhat famous and had lots of very interesting things to say. It was the first class I've had for a while that I wasn't watching the clock. My Japanese classes have begun to pick up the pace a bit, which has been nice. On Friday I had previously been told that my Japanese Economics class had been cancelled because my professor was out of the country but I was approached in my Business class a day earlier telling me that I did in fact have to go to class. I was very surprised that they made the effort to go to everyone who had registered in that lecture's class to tell them that they needed to go. It was a complete waste of my time though. They had us watch one of my professor's lectures that he had done in a previous year. To add to the fact that my professor has a very thick Japanese accent, the audio quality was horrible. I used the time to play Ninjump on my iPod. Fun times... =D

On Friday night a few of my roommates decided to go out to a nomihodai, or an all-you-can-drink bar. I had originally planned on going, if nothing else to simply relax with my friends after a long week, though I decided against it at the last minute. I'm glad I did. It apparently got quite out of control. All I'll say is I had to go out at 1:30 to help my friend from a subway station...


On Saturday I made plans with my friends who had come to Carleton last year on exchange from Nanzan to go to Nagoya Station. Once there we decided it'd be fun to go bowling. The place my friend had in mind was fairly close by, so we just walked. It's truly amazing being downtown in Nagoya on a Saturday night. There's soo many people!!! The bowling alley we went to was actually on the 6th floor of a very tall building. I never imagined I'd bowl in a high-rise. We had a ton of fun! After bowling we went to an English bar named "Hub", got some drinks and just chatted for a couple hours. Fun Stuff. :)



Left --> Right : Me, Naomichi, Alanna, Kristen, Crystal, Yukiko, Brandon



Today I had a nice chance to just sleep in until about 9. Surprisingly this was probably the longest I've slept in here. I intentionally made no plans so I wouldn't feel obliged to wake up early. At around 6 our landlord came by for our scheduled cleaning day. It's supposed to happen every week, but this was the first time we'd cleaned as an entire house. Hopefully this'll become a regular occurrence now. She was nice enough to make us a huge pot of curry, which we enjoyed together after all the cleaning was finished. It was wonderful to sit around the table with everyone. It's a rare event that we have everyone in the same room at one time.