Tuesday, April 13, 2004



So hmm
what to write.....
Well I went to a tea festival on Saturday.
Really cool.
I have lots of pictures but I have not had time to put them up yet. Maybe tomorrow - hmmm.
I went to Kanaia for the festival with Kim and Abby. Kanaia produces some of the most famous green tea in Japan and the entire town is one big tea field. It turns out they have this festival all the time but this is the first year I have ever heard of it.
We had a really good time. We headed out at around 10:30ish and got there just after. There were lots of people! We oriented ourselves with the map and I put my katakana reading to good use. (I am getting pretty good at it.) Basically everything was set close to the train station which was perfect.
The whole festival centered mostly around these huge cart things called, mikoshi, that are pulled by everyone with these LONG ropes that dad would kill for. They are those perfect ropes dad that you have been searching for. There is no steering wheel so turning is very exciting. I can not explain this to you properly with words, you need the pictures. Wait..
There were 6 of these mikoshi portable shrines because there are 6 neighborhoods in Kanaia. The entire town was there dancing to the music, pulling their shrines or taking part in some way. There were different displays set up introducing all different types of tea. There was the tea museum people who had a set up where you sat down and they pored you a very expensive tea that none of us liked and explained how to take care of your tea properly. Basically you should put it in the refrigerator. We bought a few gifts and practiced drying tea the old-fashioned way. That was fun. There was this crazy guy who had a giant keg of sake and was offering everyone a taste. Then this old man was trying to explain to Abby how to drink the sake properly by putting a pinch of salt on your tongue before drinking, Abby, understanding no Japanese, put the salt on her rice. I think he thought she was a tad crazy. Then they attacked us with this disgusting onion wasabi and an ok tasting tea wasabi.
We watched the younger people in the town do their own dancing and crazy stuff that partly resembled a gang war and had me just a little nervous. I tried asking this old man to explain it to me but I had no idea what he said.
Then we bought some beautiful tasting tea from this store. They were selling these really nice canisters filled with the tea for only 10$ so I bought some. The guy who was filling them was flirting with me and stuffed the canister as full as it possibly could then he filled the lid and had the lady tape it all together. I am too scared to open it. His mother looking person gave him a glare then proceeded to tell me to open it over a big bowl. Hehehe Then I noticed that the box in the store resembled the box that we get here at work when I order tea and I said that to Abby saying the name Sumitomo. The lady went crazy! She stuffed our arms full of free cold tea cans, handfuls of snacks and then grabbed another smaller canister for me and all the extra tea I now had!! We zipped out of there all freaking. Hehhee Going to have to say that Sumitomo word more often. I think that is where we buy our tea.
Then we headed home with very tired feet and I had a sunburn as the weather was PERFECT! Then I headed out to the movies with Kelly and watched 'Lord of the Rings 3'. After having soooo much sun my eyes started to go blurry. Great movie though!!!

Ohh and the new employees straight out of university are here for a three months training stint. They are all sitting in a meeting with blurry eyes trying to look interested. heehehehe

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::4/13/2004 :: 0 Comments:

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