(I’ve written up an entry for Saturday, but its on my Powerbook and rather long. I’ll post it once I find a good way to move it over to the work PC)

Sunday morning it was still raining after the passing of the typhoon. I did stuff around the house for a bit, then popped out to find out if the festival was still going to happen, what with the rain and all. Yep, still on and the rain was starting to lighten a bit. So I decided to do a bit of exploring to kill the time before 1pm when things started.

Southeast(?) of the central part of town is a hill/mountain with a lookout tower on it. I’ve been curious about it and one of the maps I have showed a road up to it. So I went walking to see what was there. Turns out its the town park, it has a few picnic areas, a large, grassy hillside and the tower I’d seen. The tower consists of a spiral staircase leading up to two observation levels. Very nice panoramic view of the town, I’ll post pics once I get my home internet access up. Guess between the rain and festival prep, I had the park to myself for the bit I was there.

The tower also overlooks the high school, which is on a ridge on the south(?) side of town. Just beyond it I could see the river that passes through the valley, so I headed back down and around the hill to the river. It was flowing pretty well considering the massive amounts of rain we’d just had. I’ll have to check again some other time to see what its usually like. Turns out there’s a short river park along the shore, with a walking path and landscaping. And where it ends at the main road, there’s what appears to be a shop selling local goods and crafts. After looking though it, I wandered back home along the main road, hearing repeatedly the loudspeaker van that was driving around announcing stuff about the festival.

My boss dropped by around 12:30 to get me, and we headed over to a parking structure behind the Culture Center where I work. Because of the weather, most of the activities had been moved into the parking structure or one of the other buildings. I spent most of my time moving bowls of ramen between stations of the preparation process (my boss filled the bowl with broth, another cooked the ramen noodles, another put on the toppings). I think our booth was for the local volunteer fire department.

Things were pretty lively from what I could see, although perhaps not quite as festive as they would have been at the originally planned time (Saturday evening). The festival announcer briefly “interviewed” me at one point, mostly just who I was and what I was doing in town. Then there was a singing duo of young ladies called “The Pinkies” doing covers of songs of a famous old group that was called the “Pink Ladies” (which I recognized because one of their songs, “S.O.S.” was featured in an episode of the anime Kare Kano). Weren’t too bad…

Later, once I made my escape from the ramen sweatshop, there was a bingo game that I didn’t do so well at (one girl got a TV as first prize and another got an inflatable shark that was larger than she was). I didn’t get a chance to do the “catch the goldfish” game, but I was given some when they were taking down the game. Tried to put them in a large jar at home and feed them some fish flakes. Alas they weren’t doing so well this morning, so I flushed them hoping they’d find their way to the local river or something. ^-^;;

A bit after I’d gotten back from yet another grocery shopping expedition, my boss dropped by and invited me next door to the fire station for a bit of tofu & fish sasuages, shabu-shabu style. Oh, with beer, of course. Begged off a bit early and hit the sack afterwards.

Oh, and its still raining today…

Related Posts