Samurai Festivities in Hagi

On Saturday, I met Carolin up at the post office, and we wandered around the festival stalls. As the token foreigners we got roped into many things – pounding mochi, posing for photos with costumed Japanese people, participating in ‘quizzes’ and taste testing a million different things.

The festival was pretty big – they had so many weird things on sale. I bought a base for ikebana, and some souveneirs, for whomever I decide later on. Also there was a couple of stalls selling goldfish of different sizes, ranging from tiny fish for Y100 and mega ones for Y5000.

Some of the hagi omiyage was delicious – I will buy it closer to the date of my return to Australia so it stays fresh. However, some of Matt’s high school students kept bringing me things to try – most of which were disgusting! Also, there was so much air-dried squid – and the smell was a bit overpowering. Did eat some sweet potato fries for lunch – thought they were going to be just a slight variation on the regular kind, but rather they were covered in sugar!

On Sunday I met up with Carolin again, and Carla and Melody.

We watched a whole bunch of different parades – school marching bands, people dressed up as all kinds of characters in Hagi’s history and then a whole lot of Yosakoi dancers. All the stalls were there from yesterday, as well as some more food choices. Last year some of the ALT’s got dressed up as Samurais – but we weren’t invited this year. No big deal, because Flick said the experience was less than comfortable.

We watched heaps of yosakoi dance teams – at the end it turned out that they were in a competition, and there were some really quality prizes on offer – bags of rice and boxes of daikon. Quite strange really.