Craft fair

Ayako found a craft fair that was happening at Garden Park on Saturday, so we head down there and first enjoyed a picnic in the park.

 After, we enjoyed wandering around the fair.  It was a beautiful fall day and there were hundreds of sellers from across Japan.

 I think this may have been the best craft fair that I've been to since it was free, there was a great selection of crafts and and there was lots of room to move around since it was outside.

Firefly viewing

We had many friends join us from both Hamamatsu and Toyohashi this past Saturday to go see the fireflies in Forest Park. I've previously tried taking photos of them (photos here), but it doesn't work so well. Instead, I've posted some of the photos of the daytime activities and the BBQ that took place:

Golden Week Activities - Hamamatsu festival

We were joined by some friends from Toyohashi today and went down to the beach to see the kite festival:

We could see the kites flying well before we got to the area:

Here I am in front of one of the kites:And here are some of the friends that joined us:
Here is Ayako with Yoko:
In the next few photos, you can see some of the groups with their areas' flags and them flying their kites:

In was quite windy and so the kites were getting tangled more often than I've seen before:

In the video below, you can here the bugles that are played and you can see some groups together trying to keep their kites up in the air while trying to untangle them:

After, we headed downtown for the international food festival

Ayako and I didn't stay to watch parade of floats this year since we had free tickets to go see a movie. We saw Alice in Wonderland, which I thought was alright, although I still don't like wearing the 3D glasses. After the movie, we were able to get a close up look at one of the floats (yatai) all lit up at night:

Golden Week Activities

Golden Week started on Saturday for me this year. I usually have about a week off for the holidays, but I only have 5 days off this year. On Saturday, Eiki and Emi came for a visit. Eiki just got back from a year spent working in Brazil, so it was interesting listening to all of his stories.
On Sunday, we had a fairly relaxed day, but did enjoy going for a bicycle ride. I tried to find some new places to visit, so we found some remote areas near us. Here are some Fuji flowers blooming:
We had a good view of our house from across the lake on the way back. It's hard to see in this picture, but our house is on the left side of the picture:
Here is a close-up of our house (in the centre of the photo):
Here was a nice shot shortly before sunset:
On Monday, we went for a drive up into the mountains to find a shrine on the top of one of the mountains. I love driving in the mountains since the roads are only single lanes and so the trees feel very close. Here was the entrance to the shrine:
They were having a special ceremony that day since they had picked new tea leaves the day before. Here you can see the tea leaves drying:
Here is the shrine on the top of the mountain:
You can see how high up we are in the following photo:
There were some nice mountain birds that I don't get to see where we live:

Hamamatsu International Mosaiculture

Ayako and I were able to both have days off work on Wednesday, and so we decided to go visit the Hamamatsu International Mosaiculture (ie. plants grown in various shapes), which was happening just down the road from us. We got on our bikes and had a leisure ride to Flower Park where the exhibition was taking place:
About half of the sculptures were from Japan and the other half from around the world including some from very small countries. This one was from Japan:
The girl in the next photo was singing a song about a pony while I took this shot. It was very cute:
This was an impressive sculpture of Mt. Fuji erupting:
We were able to have a nice shot taken in front of it:
Each of the sculptures had been given a prize for some area. This one of green tea being poured won 3rd prize for a 3D entry:
The next one was from Hamamatsu and had classical music playing:
This one was from China:
Ayako seemed almost more impressed with these purple flowers growing along the path and so she wanted her photo taken with them:
Halfway around the park, we watched the water fountain display which was put to music. I'm happy I could get the rainbow in the shot:
This next one is of the large kites that are sometimes flown during festivals in Japan:
Here was a dragon that has steam coming from its mouth:
A cute turtle:
This one won a 2D prize:
As did this one:
But the grand winner of the exhibition was from Canada...Yeah! It's called "The Man who plants tree":
The dog in front was very simple yet very life-like:
Here are some of the sheep that are with him:
As well as some horses running behind him:
It was a beautiful day and so we enjoyed ourselves greatly at the park. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.