Here I have been terrible about the blogging over the last few weeks. It isn't because exciting stuff is happening...more that I have lacked the energy to write up stuff and be witty about things. I have oodles of pictures from several adventures that I will update soon. I can't do the post about Nanta yet either. I don't know where my picture went for it. So we are going to skip ahead!
Right after I got home from Korea, it was the Takeda Shingen Festival. Takeda Shingen was the head of a samurai shogunate based in Yamanashi. This festival is the worlds largest gathering of samurai in the world. Over 1500 samurai march in the parade. The red banner you see with 4 squares is the symbol of the Shingen clan.
All of the samurai clans were represented. Even the Hitachi clan!
All the people just lined up to watch the parade and listen to some kind of triumphant Japanese speech made by the famous actor that was playing Takeda Shingen.
Girl samurai...kind of. Also a really tall white guy! See if you can find him in the parade (hint: he is way taller than the rest).
More samurai.
I went up to get some delicious street food. I thought I was buying chicken on a stick or something. As I read the sign, it was written "tan." I was confused about what that meant. It was written as an Japanese version of an English word. As I said it over and over trying to figure it out, the girl who served them up pointed to her tongue and said 'tan.' There we go. The one on the far right is cow tongue. The ones on the left were mystery beef. You may be thinking, "why did you eat it? Was it good?" Yes it was good, and I ate it for the experience.
Also there was dancing. I don't know what they had to do with samurai.
This was a samurai warlord guy who was head of one of the clans. He rode a horse.
You can hear Shingen shouting out things to the crowd over the triumphant music. It was weird.
We are marvelling at the beginning of this video because our friend Coleman was leading the procession for Takeda Shingen. He is a big white guy from Georgia, so we thought it was pretty cool. During this video, Shingen came by. You can tell because hordes of people came to take pictures.
Each clan wouls top and shout in frong of us. They did this a whole bunch of times. Most of them really lacked hustle though. They were just kind of going through the motions. Which is weird right? I mean, you are samurai!
More lackadaisical chanting. Some of them I get. Rather than being from a cool clan, they are from the clan of Yamanashi Middle Bank. Also a group from Panasonic Electronics clan. Took some of the magic out of it.
Samurai affiliated dancing...I thought it was crazy and entertaining...crazataining.
It was really quite chilly with the vicious wind that was blowing. I did go up to Kofu Castle and see the cherry blossoms.
People standing around at the food vendors. Cherry blossoms are awesome! They look like a second snow.
Looking out across the moat.
A line of vendors.
Down a street. Sorry the pictures are such low quality, it was nighttime.
I don't know what happened here, but The guy in the bottom right looks all zoomed up like he is on America's Most Wanted...I CAUGHT YOU EATING NOODLES!
The Takeda Shingen statue in the prefecture. Cool dude right?
3 comments:
I've had tongue before! A hispanic couple in our ward made it for us. It's actually really tender...
I remember opening the fridge at grandma's house and seeing a large cow tongue sitting on a plate covered in saran wrap. It still looked exactly like a tongue. Had I ever been tempted to try tongue in my life, that vision completely ruined me...
I REMEMBER THAT tongue in the fridge as well. Mom would slice it for sandwiches...ugh. Now that barbeque look not bad. Was the samuari group really called Panasonic....?
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