Yo ... Ya Sa!!!

So yesterday was Shinzaike's fall matsuri (autum festival) and it was heaps fun like last year. The day started at 8 am at our neighborhood shrine. We watched the lion dance and then carried the shrine around a bit. Ofcourse matsuri's aren't matsuri's without saké so after carrying around the shrine we each got a small bowl of saké. The parade continued around our neighborhood until about 11:30 when we stopped in a local park along with several other community shrines. During the parade one of the community leaders took a liking to my chanting so I spent the whole march calling "yo ... ya sa!"
After the parade we ate lunch in the park and then did a bit of shrine battling. Once that was complete all the ALT's headed back to the apartment to wash and rest a bit before the community dinner. A group of us went and had dinner with some of the local coordinators of the festival. There wasn't much I could eat, but it was cool to hang out with the Japanese people who made the event possible.
After dinner a group of us went out to Tiger Pub and hung out there until late. Eri showed up for a couple hours and we talked about what happend. She told me that one of the things that had her most spooked was that I reminded her of how things went with her ex-boyfriend when they started out (ie. we were on the same general path). That and she didn't know about me leaving in another 10 months or so. So we are going to try out just being friends and see how that goes.
So there is today's blog extraviganza.