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On October 12th Jonathan and I were invited to a small neighborhood festival in Iwata. Some neighborhoods in Iwata had their festivals the weekend before (the same weekend I went to the Backstreet Boys concert) and I had wondered what they were about.  

It was a nice day, so Jonathan and I biked from his apartment to the festival. It took about an hour and a half.


After eating a big, delicious lunch we stopped by the neighborhood shrine and headed out to help pull a float. I learned that the festival is for giving thanks for the harvest and other things.


The float is pulled through the neighborhood and has to pass by every house. The people on the float play music. At one point the music stopped and we were told it was because someone had died in the past year. The people in that family can't participate in the festival that year. 


The previous weekend I had seen many floats being pulled around my apartment and didn't really understand the point. It seemed a bit boring to just pull around a float all day. Well, we pulled it around a little bit, then stopped to eat, pulled it around a big more, ate some more, and so on. There was so much food! The first time we stopped I had a popsicle. The second time I was handed something that I had no clue what it was, but it ended up being fried quail eggs on a stick which were delicious!


At one point we stopped at a nursing home and many of the residents took pictures by the float. At this point I ate a mikan, which I've been told is a tangerine or a mandarin orange or something, I don't know the difference. I hate eating oranges, but I like mikan. 


This little cart with food and drinks was pulled behind the bigger float. 

Then we headed back to the shrine where there was even more food! Despite being pretty full already, people kept offering food to Jonathan and I. I had kakigori (shaved ice with flavored syrup and condensed milk), yakitori (chicken on a stick), edamame, and a couple other things I'm probably not remembering right now.


I was really full, but then someone brought out a melon cut in half and gave Jonathan and I each a half. It was grown by one of the men there at the festival. He has several greenhouses and they're really fancy and controlled by computers so that they grow in perfect conditions. We were told that the melons sell in Tokyo for 8,000 yen! That's about 80 dollars!

So despite being full, I couldn't refuse such a special gift. Luckily melon is not very filling and I had no trouble eating it. I'm not a huge melon fan, but I enjoy it every once in a while and it was a good melon. Though I can't imagine paying 8000 yen for one!

Also, we had some pickled baby melons. Three melons grow on each plant but only one can be allowed to grow to full size so the tiny ones are pickled. They were really delicious! I would never guess that they were baby melons.


Once it was dark we headed out again to pull the float to another location. Five or Six neighborhoods pulled their floats all to one location. Once we got there, some speeches were given (that most people didn't really pay attention to). Even Jonathan and I were asked to say something on stage, hahaha. I just said that I had had fun at the festival and thank you. Then of course we ate some more. I had an onigiri (rice ball) and some pear. 


The float looked really neat with the lanterns lit up at night! 

It had been a really fun day and I was already a bit tired, but Jonathan and I had to bike back to his apartment. It was really windy and we took a different way (because going through the dark woods at night would be scary!) than we had come that morning so it took us about two hours. It was sooooo windy! At some points we just had to walk our bicycles. With all that biking and walking and pulling I was pretty sore the next day! But it was worth it!


This picture is from a house near by apartment the previous weekend. Many houses around Iwata and Hamamatsu had these pink flowers and I wondered what their purpose was. I learned that they symbolize happiness and they're made by handicapped people and sold to people participating in the festival. They're really cute! :)

I didn't want to carry my camera around during the festival, so I only had my cell phone. I took a video and I'm not sure how to transfer it to my computer, plus I'm sure it's horrible anyways since I took it at night. I took some videos of the floats around my apartment the previous weekend so here's a video of those:

Last Friday Jonathan and I too a bike ride in the late afternoon/evening. Before setting out I bought some snacks at a konbini. I got peach mango gummies, tea, and Cheeza crackers (So good! Better than Cheez-its!) The tea came with a Rilakkuma bottle cover! :)



We took a bridge from Hamamatsu to Iwata that we had never taken before. It was shaky! It had a pretty view of the wind turbines in the distance. I really like them for some reason.




The wind turbines are kind of creepy up close. Actually the whole area had a kind of creepy feel in a good way.


The bike path went along the ocean for a while and then went through the woods. Eventually we made it to the beach and ate our snacks.


Jonathan was not thrilled with my cute snacks. Luckily he had his own, but I made him take this picture, haha. Though he did eat some of my gummies and really liked them.


We didn't stay at the beach too long because it was getting dark and I didn't want to bike through the woods at night. On our way back we saw a tanuki on the path! I didn't get a picture, but I found this one somewhere online.

 

There's a sad, creepy, little lighthouse. It didn't look so bad from really really far away.

The next morning we had a minor earthquake. My apartment swayed and creaked and there was a bigger jolt at one point, but nothing huge. It lasted maybe about 20 seconds. In a few minutes I looked up the map online and saw that the epicenter was not far from here and that it had been a 5.1.  It was a 3 out of 7 on the JMA scale here (which is based on actual shaking and how it feels) and a 4 where Jonathan lives. He was at my apartment when it happened. On the way back to his apartment later that day he was saying maybe his picture frames or something had fallen over. I said I really doubted anything had fallen.


 When I went in his apartment I saw all his pictures still standing. Then I turned and saw the destruction. Captain Picard had fallen down! Hahaha.


Later we went back to the beach, but this time we drove. 


We made like a sand fort thingy, haha. We were both making our own at first and competing, but mine kept getting washed away by the waves so eventually I just helped him with his.



Yesterday I was on Skype with Jonathan and I heard the earthquake alarm on his phone going off and then my phone alarm started going off. I looked at it and saw that it said some other prefecture but I couldn't read which one. It didn't start shaking though and I figured that if it didn't start shaking soon it wasn't much. But then when that alarm went off the town's alarms started going off.

I looked at what people were saying on facebook and the phone message had said something about a magnitude 7 earthquake in Nara. It seemed weird though because even though Nara is kind of far away I think we would have felt at least something here. I kept checking the earthquake map online and eventually the information updated. It had been a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. So it turns out it was a false alarm. It was kind of weird.

Last weekend Jonathan and I biked to Tenryu which is a small town in Hamamatsu. We went there because it's near the mountains and we wanted to bike to the mountains.

First, here are some pictures of my bike. I took these pictures a couple of months ago for this blog, but I never got around to posting them.


This type of lock is very typical for Japanese bicycles. The lock is built into the bicycle so you can park the bike anywhere and don't have to find a place to chain it up. 


The kick stand also has a part that locks (not with a key though) so that it doesn't fall over so easily. 


It's illegal to ride a bicycle at night without a light. This one flips so that it touches the tire and the friction powers the light.


Japanese bikes almost always have baskets. Convenient and cute! :)


 The bell! Ding ding ding!

We started Sunday morning by eating breakfast at McDonalds and then picking up some snacks and drinks at 7-11.

I bought tea with the Cheshire Cat on it. 
 

That's a picture I took while Jonathan was pumping up my tires and I was bored.

We rode through Iwata for most of the way, so here's the bridge crossing into Iwata.  




We rode along Tenryu river for a while, but the train ends eventually so we had to ride on streets the rest of the way. They were very quiet though and mostly went past a lot of fields.






The manhole covers in that area of Iwata had flowers on them. The ones where I live have dragonflies on them.


That's the bridge crossing back into Hamamatsu. Then we crossed the river again to go into Tenryu.


 The bridge in that pictures was a railroad bridge. The train only had one car. So short!

As we headed into the town, it looked like the sidewalk was going to end and we would have to go through a tunnel with cars, but there was a tunnel just for bikes and pedestrians.


It was really cool in that area so we decided to take a break there. We got some snacks from a nearby Family Mart.



This time of year you can find frozen drinks in the konbinis. They're really good when spending time outside because all the other drinks I had that day got warm way too quickly.

We rode around the area for a little while before heading back to Jonathan's apartment.













Overall we biked over 40 kilometers. It had been hot and exhausting, but really nice and fun! :) We later went to the grocery store and I saw this car in the parking lot.

The next week (Wednesday evening, I think) we biked to the Nakatajima Sand Dunes in Hamamatsu. It was probably about 20 to 25 kilometers overall.





We got some ice cream at a nearby Circle K and ate it on the beach. It's not the most beautiful beach (and you can't swim there), but it's still nice and pretty and peaceful in the evening.

We were going to bike to some park today (not far from Tenryu), but it was just too hot and we felt lazy. Maybe some other time! Summer break is so soon! I just have school on Tuesday and half of Wednesday this week!