Thursday, September 09, 2010

Labor Day – Japanese Festival

For Labor Day weekend, we visited the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Garden.  This is a huge festival with like 25,000 people coming.  It was a little pricey in my mind, I guess cause I am used to going to the gardens for free.  It reminded me of the teeny tiny one that Ann Arbor does but much bigger and in a much bigger space.  Anyways, Japanese shops and booths.  Bonsai trees (nothing to compare with the ones we saw in Japan, of course).  Ikebana.  Martial arts.  Ice sculpting.  A summer festival parade.  Taiko.  Singing.  All those weird people dressed up like anime and manga and video game characters.  Lots of ceremonial (ha ha ha) sake drinking.  Banraku (?) puppet shows.  Origami and calligraphy.  Overpriced Japanese food, mostly yakisoba, okinomiyaki, sushi, and barley tea.  Water yo-yos.  Candy making.  And, believe or not, sumo!  It was a long day and both the boys fell asleep on the way home.  My favorite part – the procession and the sumo, of course.

First, Seth in his normal state – squatting.  He can do this FOREVER.  He is truly Asian.

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The procession:

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Other pictures:

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