Gion Matsuri
Gion Matsuri is one of the biggest festivals in Japan.
They make massive wooden portable shrines and drag them through the city in a parade at the height of the festival. Before that, they have stalls and general festiveness throughout the central city area, and people dress up in yukata (summer kimono) to go view the shrines as their being built.
My university organised a day for a group of us to be dressed up in yukata and wander around looking at the shrines, then took us out for sushi and all-you-can-drink alcohol.
The girls even got to keep their yukata, although unfortunately the guys didn’t cause there’s were rental. As you can see, there’s me in mine on the left.
Here’s a view from the back, and a close up of my hair (I got a lot of compliments on it, and everyone who asked was mildly disappointed to find out that I bought the hair clip in Australia, not Japan)

It was heaps of fun, and I got to hang out with Marthe and Ward again, as well as catch up with Annie and Yuhana (the Finnish students) and O-san (the Chinese guy whose apartment exploded - he said his new place is nice, but smaller). Annie, Marthe and Ward teased Yuhana because his name is very close to Yohana which is a girls name. He said that’s a very different name and they just nodded. I have no idea whether I’m spelling it right not not mind you.
Here are some photos of the day walking around looking at the shrines. I love the boat shaped one. Apparently they make them without any nails at all, all just joinery and rope. Also it’s really cool how they set up a gangplank from the second floor of the neighbouring building to get stuff onto the shrine once it’s done. We got stared and taken photos of a lot because we were a group of foreigners in yukata.
I also hung out with my friend Sarah and a few of her housemates from the boarding house she lives in, one night around the festival stalls. I didn’t dress up again though, cause geta (the wooden shoes) kinda hurt after a few hours, and I didn’t want to push it two days in the same week. My ankle is getting better, but it’s still not brilliant.
The first photo below, I took 4 times with different camera for them all, we all agreed it’d make a good postcard. We were in the convenience store to get a break from the humidity, but I have no explanation for why we were taking photos in there, lol.
As you can see from the second last photo, no festival is complete without a stall where people can shoot things. …Also, we were in Gion, so we saw Geisha, but I was too shy to take a photo from the front. heh heh.














In celebration of having access to the internet from home again (happened today), and also in celebration of the convenience stores of Japan, here are a couple of random pictures:
Chewbacca

So I have to apologise to everyone for not being online or otherwise staying in contact.


Vincent, Jackie and Maggie bought me a goodbye gift, which is a plush toy tofu block (pictured left) ^_^it’s sooo soft, and cute and was totally unexpected, and so nice of them. *huggles tofu*
He was actually pretty cool, with better Japanese than me, so we spoke a bit when he was around (although he wasn’t around much) and he taught me all about the scariness of portable gas hotplates. He came in to say goodbye before leaving and gave me a packet of caramel corn as a parting gift, which was really sweet and (again) unexpected.




I got my cast off today! 