Saturday 15th September (evening)
Hot on the tails of our gluttonous beachside BBQ Craig and I were off to join in with what must have the been the start of the Toya Autumn Festival (actual title unknown)! Typically it was pouring down with rain but fortunately no-one else seemed to care so up to the Shrine we went with Hiromi-san armed with 1000Yen and a dictionary. The latter of which proved to just be incredibly annoying to carry, and ultimately resulted with me losing the water fight…
But first the actual festival part. Upon arrival I walked up to the main Shrine building, where I was told to ring the bell, do some clapping, take a bow, and have some ceremonial Sake. I should probably elaborate more since that was definitely the more traditional part of the evening - but in all honesty it wasn’t too exciting. Once that was over with it was straight onto the Yakitori and beer in true festival style. I honestly don’t know how I managed to eat more meat that day but its tough to turn down meat on a stick, especially when someone buys it for you. From then on neither myself nor Craig knew what we supposed to be doing, the locals all seemed to be engaged in a large game of Bingo in the rain so we bought waterpistols instead. And so the childish behaviour commenced - we were joined in our fight by Montbelle-san, one of the kids from the nursery. I unfortunately was the eventual loser, my error being buying the largest water pistol there, which unfortunately required two hands to use effectively. So with one hand busy using my umbrella to defend myself from Craig I was a sitting duck. Montbelle faired better, having the advantage of a full length raincoat and his signature Montbelle hat to protect him. At the end of the evening all the children, and many of the adults (probably under the guise of ‘helping’ their children) crouch down and have sweets and ricecakes rained down from the stage onto them. We of course joined in, waddling our way rather obviously up front. When the food shower started it was carnage, with little (and large) hands grabbing everywhere, I decided to use my height advantage and stand up to intercept the food before it hit the deck. We had quite an impressive haul by the end! Though we decided to be kind and donate much of it to the jealous looking children. The festival dissolved after all that excitement and we headed back to sleep, since we were to be up early the next day for the main part of the festival. Which unsurprisingly is coming up on my next post!
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