And for dessert, Ayako made a carrot cake that was decorated like a sumo ring:
It was pretty and delicious as well.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sumo dinner
Today was the last day of the Summer Tournament for sumo wrestling, so I had some friends over to watch the last-day matches. After, we ate chanko nabe, which is the main food of sumo wrestlers. Chanko nabe is a type of stew made with pork, chicken, and lots of vegetables cooked in a stewing pot:
And for dessert, Ayako made a carrot cake that was decorated like a sumo ring:
It was pretty and delicious as well.
And for dessert, Ayako made a carrot cake that was decorated like a sumo ring:It was pretty and delicious as well.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Meeting the relatives
Today Ayako and I drove with Ayako's mom to the city next to ours where Ayako's mom's side of the family lives. We met her older brother first for a bit and then went to visit Ayako's grandma's home for lunch. After lunch, grandma, who is 93 years old, joined us on the tour. We next visited Ayako's mom's sister at her bento (boxed lunch) store and after that to visit another brother at his flower shop. Lastly we visited the grave of grandma's husband at a temple. We took the following photos while walking around the temple area:
Monday, May 07, 2007
Hamamatsu Matsuri 2007
On May 3rd, 4th & 5th is the Hamamatsu festival. Each ward in the city dresses in their ward's outfits and help fly their ward's kite and then at night, there is a parade with each ward's float. (You can see more pictures of these on the May 2006 page of my blog). I didn't take part in the festival as much this year, but Ayako and I still went down near the beach to watch the kites:
It's impressive watching about 100 of these large kites (one for each ward) flying together. On the last day, they have a huge kite dog-fight, with many kites falling. You can see the real size of the kites in the photo below. This kite is from my ward with a picture of a boar on it:
You can see people from another ward celebrating in their ward's outfits here:
At night their is a parade with people from each ward pulling their ward's fancy floats (which can look like small castles) through downtown. Each float can cost up to a million dollars to make and so can take many years for a ward to raise the money to buy one:
In the photo below, you can see some of the detail of the wood carving on a float:
In this photo, two wards are celebrating together:
After this, the people from their ward would return with their float to the shrine for the town. After that, they visit houses that have had a baby in the past year. I was lucky this year to help one of the houses with a baby greet the well-wishers. About 100 people from this small ward visit the family's house and have a celebration for the new baby. The house provides food and drink for everyone (so it's not cheap for the family). Next year, I'll try to get photos of this, so that it will be easier to explain.
It's impressive watching about 100 of these large kites (one for each ward) flying together. On the last day, they have a huge kite dog-fight, with many kites falling. You can see the real size of the kites in the photo below. This kite is from my ward with a picture of a boar on it:
You can see people from another ward celebrating in their ward's outfits here:
At night their is a parade with people from each ward pulling their ward's fancy floats (which can look like small castles) through downtown. Each float can cost up to a million dollars to make and so can take many years for a ward to raise the money to buy one:
In the photo below, you can see some of the detail of the wood carving on a float:
In this photo, two wards are celebrating together:
After this, the people from their ward would return with their float to the shrine for the town. After that, they visit houses that have had a baby in the past year. I was lucky this year to help one of the houses with a baby greet the well-wishers. About 100 people from this small ward visit the family's house and have a celebration for the new baby. The house provides food and drink for everyone (so it's not cheap for the family). Next year, I'll try to get photos of this, so that it will be easier to explain.
Trip to Chiba
Last week was Golden week in Japan, which is made up of 4 holidays. Lucky for me, my work also gives me the days off between the holidays, so I had the whole week off. Ayako and I joined another co-worker, Heather and her boyfriend, Hiro on a trip to Chiba prefecture which is on the other side of Tokyo from us (south of Narita airport). We had a long drive out there, passing Mount Fuji on the way:
We bypassed Tokyo by going through a long tunnel under Tokyo bay. It actually only goes 2-thirds of the way and the rest is a bridge. Where you come out of the tunnel, there is a building designed as a ship where you can rest and get something to eat. We stopped and had a good lunch there and took some photos:
Before reaching out destination, we stopped and took a cable car ride to the top of a mountain with a good view:
The mountain used to be used for cutting stone slabs from the mountain, but is not in operation anymore:
We arrived at the cottage where we would spend the next 3 days. It was up on a hill and had a beautiful view:
The cottage had all the latest technologies which were fun to play with, including a Nintendo Wii:
and also had a hot tub which we used once or twice a day:
We had lots of great meals that we made together:
One day, Ayako and I took a walk to the beach. We found a supermarket called Odoya. We took a picture of it because Ayako's family name is Odo and 'ya' means shop in Japanese, so basically Odo's shop:
We also found a nice large natural park which was good for birdwatching. They even had some exotic bird in captivity such as these peacocks:
The park also had a good view of the ocean:
On the last day, we drove to Tokyo where we went shopping at Costco and also dropped Hiro off since he was getting laser eye surgery the next day. Overall, it was a good, relaxing trip.
We bypassed Tokyo by going through a long tunnel under Tokyo bay. It actually only goes 2-thirds of the way and the rest is a bridge. Where you come out of the tunnel, there is a building designed as a ship where you can rest and get something to eat. We stopped and had a good lunch there and took some photos:
Before reaching out destination, we stopped and took a cable car ride to the top of a mountain with a good view:
The mountain used to be used for cutting stone slabs from the mountain, but is not in operation anymore:
We arrived at the cottage where we would spend the next 3 days. It was up on a hill and had a beautiful view:
The cottage had all the latest technologies which were fun to play with, including a Nintendo Wii:
and also had a hot tub which we used once or twice a day:
We had lots of great meals that we made together:
One day, Ayako and I took a walk to the beach. We found a supermarket called Odoya. We took a picture of it because Ayako's family name is Odo and 'ya' means shop in Japanese, so basically Odo's shop:
We also found a nice large natural park which was good for birdwatching. They even had some exotic bird in captivity such as these peacocks:
The park also had a good view of the ocean:
On the last day, we drove to Tokyo where we went shopping at Costco and also dropped Hiro off since he was getting laser eye surgery the next day. Overall, it was a good, relaxing trip.
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