Hadaka

This Saturday I finally got a chance to see the Hadaka festival in Kakuda. The last few years it was during the week and I always just missed it. Hadaka by the way means “naked”. Now they aren’t actually naked, but they are wearing basically just underwear. Keep in mind that the temperature was around zero degrees!  Plus they had to be out in the cold for a couple hours. It’s kinda crazy!! Check out some photos below.

Fireworks

I went to the Alps festival in Kakuda this weekend. They have really good fireworks for a small town festival. I wanted to try taking some photos of the fireworks. I had mixed result, but it was the first time (damn my shaky hands). Next time will be better for sure. I did however take a couple of strange photos that I kind of liked so here they are.

Damage

I’m finally back on the internet again after almost a week. Things are starting to get semi-normal. We have power, internet, and telephone (land line and cell). We still don’t have water yet (so I’m probably pretty stinky now), and most of the stores are still closed, so getting food can be a bit difficult sometimes. We still have enough to eat though. We also can’t get any gasoline, and the trains are not even close to running any time soon. It’s not so bad though, considering how some people are having a much worse time right now.

Anyways here’s some photos of the damage around my neighborhood. It’s nowhere near as bad as some of the stuff you’ve probably seen on TV. In fact it’s kind of trivial compared to the tsunami damage.The first three are at our house. The earthquake almost toppled the wall behind our house.

It’s actually very lucky that it fell away from the house. Below is a stone ornament thing in our garden. The earthquake just shattered it to pieces.

During the earthquake I was standing near it, and didn’t even notice it falling down (or the wall for that matter). Everything was shaking so much and for so long, I thought it was never going to end. I could barely even stand up. I had to hold onto a post, but I still had problems keeping my feet on the ground. It was easily the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.

Below is several photos of my immediate neighborhood.

Most of the worst damage was to older buildings. Below a temple gate fell right over.

Some of the streets just cracked right open. When I was driving the other day I saw a crack in the road almost half a foot wide. Also I saw a section where the road sank over a foot! These are smaller ones just down the street from my house.

Since the earthquake we’ve experienced almost constant aftershocks.  Some quite substantial too. In fact some of the aftershocks have been stronger than earthquakes we’ve had before. Thankfully it’s starting to settle down to one or two every couple of hours. So that’s the current up date as it stands so far.

Oh by the way I forgot to mention that the inside of our house was completely trashed. Stuff was everywhere, and a lot of it was broken. One thing that surprised me was one of our heavy shelves actually had moved a foot and a half sideways! Also our fridge toppled over and hit a shelf . I found it sitting diagonal with the doors wide open and the food all over the ground.

Cold New Years

Here’s a couple photos I took when we went to the nearby shrine for our New Years visit. It was actually the first and only substantial snow fall that we’ve had this year. It was also bloody cold too!

It’s hard to take a nice photo when you have hundreds of snow flakes whizzing past your lens.

Don’t worry though, all the snow disappeared a couple days later. In fact it was a balmy 14 degrees a couple days ago.

Still Some Color

I took these photos this week. The trees in our garden are still sporting some nice red leaves. It’s amazing they still have them, and we’re almost half way through December.

I’m still not used to seeing blooming flowers at this time of year. Hell, our chili pepper plant is still growing peppers!

Kakuda Tanabata ’09

This weekend I was busy going to lots of summer festivals. One of the was the Kakuda Tanabata festival on Friday, which is conveniently located close to my house. They had all of the tanabata decorations hung up all over one of the main streets.

There was lots of food stands, and lots of bands playing all day long. They were all local bands (I’m surprised how many punk bands there are in Kakuda). At night they had the rocket lit up, so you could see it anywhere in town.

Also there were fireworks as well, to cap off the whole event.

Iris Festival

Today we went to the Iris Festival in Kakuda. Iris is a big manufacturer of plastic stuff, kind of like Rubbermaid in North America. Well they have a huge factory on the outskirts of Kakuda city. It seems like most of the big companies here have annual festivals. This one was an international food festival.

The had all kinds of foods, like Indian…

Korean…

And most importantly kebabs!!

I was very happy to see kebabs, since it’s been well over a year since I had a shawarma, gyro, or any kind of meat in a pita. It was delicious. Some of the other countries they had food from were Italy, Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, America, and Malaysia.

Local Food

Here’s a couple of the local grocery stores in Kakuda. The first is a really common chain all of Japan, York Benimaru. It’s owned by the same company that runs as 7/11 in Japan.

The other is smaller and a lot less common. I’m not even sure if it’s even anywhere outside of Miyagi. It is however my favorite in Kakuda. It’s called Itochen.

The reason I like it is the meat there is so much cheaper than York. Actually almost everything is cheaper. It doesn’t have as much selection as York, but the cheapness and close proximity to my house more than make up for it.9

Sea of Flowers

Yesterday we took a very small drive to the river in Kakuda. What was waiting for us there was a literal sea of yellow flowers.

Supposedly next week there will be a festival held in this spot to celebrate the blooming flowers. I’m kind of glad we went this week, because there was barely any people there. I can just imagine all of the people trying to get their pictures taken, and ruining the beauty in the process.

Our Sakura

Here’s a picture of the cherry tree at our house. It’s not very big, since it’s still young (in a tree sense that is), but it’s still really beautiful. The flowers are really nice and pink. I didn’t even realize it was a cherry tree until this year. Last year when I arrived it was already green.