Kakonodate!

Man talk about BUSY. Ok I got up early today. Why? Well because today we went to Kukonodate. It's an old Samurai city. No Samurai live there of course but they used to and we got to see their houses and take pictures of them. I also Tasted the many different snacks. I had a Naruto mochi which is a rice treat stuffed with red bean paste. I also had some sticky rice on a stick. That was wierd and really salty. We stopped at a cute little dinner where we had cold udon. Well most of us did. It's too hot for hot udon. They gave us free cold barley tea. There was a festival today so There were many girls dressed in Yukatas which are cheaper and cooler versions of Kimono. There were also these wierd floats where the men and women would literally pull it up and down the streets. It was crazy. Then when two floats met each other on the same street, they would "fight" as in they would crash the floats into each other over and over until who knows when whilst beating these huge drums and blowing an irritating whistle (that drove me crazy) . We also checked out the grave yard where there was a giant Buddha statue. I thought it was a Virgin Mary at first. We also pased by a giant temple but it was closed today. There were also tons and tons of street vendors. There were those silly little games where you try to catch goldfish with a paper net (didn't do it) or you fish for a water balloon with a rubberband on it and lots of other wierd fishing-for-objects games that just use up your money. There was alos traditional singing and plenty of omiyagi(souvenir shops). All the stuff there was so pretty and quaint that I had to resist the urge to prevent from getting severly wallet raped (1500 yen for a bowl? I don't think so) It was warm and I got sweaty but so did everyone else. I bought some pink Sakura (cherry blossom) udon as a souvenir. Then we all made the trip back to AIU around 630 and got back at about 8pm I think.