Birthday Presents

Jannma sent Alice an extra room for our small apartment. She spends a great deal of time inside lately. I'm going to try to hang it off the side balcony like a window box.



Bek and I bought her a keyboard and a guitar to play around on. She looks so Indie in her Nepalese beanie.





We also had cake, so she tried hard to get it out and eat it all the way from the bakery to the restaurant.

Obligatory Cherry Blossom Post

We went to Inokashira park to do some cherry blossom viewing. Most of the park is actually taken up by a lake.




As you can see, it's quite crowded, pretty much every area was covered in blue tarp and sat upon.



Kunugi-san found this park for us, it's one of the less popular places, so we thought we'd have less people to contend with.




This bridge seems to be sagging in the middle with all the people on it.



Of course, less popular is a relative term.

Annual Gift Man Lives on the Moon

We went to Ito-san's house for some pre-Christmas fried chicken and strawberry sponge cake. Alice got a big boot filled with lollies.

The dogs got into the spirit of Christmas, too.

On Christmas day we invited Nao, Atsuko and Ema over for a roast chicken and pudding lunch. And presents, of course.

Alice was rolling around on the floor and Ema wanted to get Alice to sit on her head for some reason. Hilarity ensued.

One of Alice's cool presents was a mini revolving sushi conveyor belt. And sushi. Oh and it's Hello, Kitty branded. Too much Japan is never enough.

Old Doll Festival

The Ningyo Kuyo, or Old Doll Festival, is held at Kiyomizu Kannondo temple in Ueno park each year. The ningyo used in the festival are old and worn and belong to school children who come to pray for the dolls.

The kids are quite young as you can see. The priests do some chanting for the dolls' spirits, burn incense, march around sombrely and stoke the fire. Did I say stoke the fire? Yah, they stoke the large metal fireplace in preparation.

For what? Ah well, these dolls are used, they are broken, they want relief from the earthly realm of grabbing hands and careless play. They want deliverance into doll nirvana.

So, they shovel the dolls in and the children file past and give a little prayer for their playthings. Hopefully the dolls will be reincarnated as Barbies far away from Japanese infernos.

Harajuku Super Yosakoi

The Harajuku Super Yosakoi is a dance fesstival with around 2,500 dancers attending. They dance in formation up and down Omote-sando Dori, kind of like Asian line dancers. Except with props. There's no point describing it really, here.





Here are some really, really young children dancing poorly.

Azabu-Juban Shopping Street Festival

Well, we are back in Japan so I'll start blogging again for the two of you that read this. Thanks, guys.

As it's Summer here, there are a plethora of festivals to attend, if you don't mind being absolutely mauled and trampled in a surging throng of sweaty Japanese people. We don't mind so we strolled down to the Azabu-Juban Shopping Street Festival which is better than its name suggests. It is mainly concerned with shopping and it's held in a street, but everything else about it is strange enough to us to make it interesting.

As it was already banana past tomato, we had to hurry to get to the festival on time. The main part of the festival involves drinking beer and eating weird food , like these fish on sticks.

Most things came on sticks, and were, thankfully, less identifiable than the fish or we would have starved. The main mode of selling was having some burly blokes shout at you some witty repartee about how a fish with a stick in it was more delicious than the unidentifiable meat with a stick in it at the next stall. Also popular were the scantily clad girls selling beer to people who didn't need more beer.

Here are some balloons; thankfully none of these balloon dogs are wearing balloon sweaters in the sweltering heat. In Japan, dogs ride around in strollers because they get tired quickly, unlike all other dogs in the universe.

It got harder to walk the farther we walked, so we cut down a side street and sat down to watch the people walk by. Of course, with Alice the people stopped to pinch her cheeks and exclaim rather than walk past us as they were supposed to.