looking down main st.
Originally uploaded by Jason In Japan.
On Monday, the 15th, Taisha - my small town - had its annual summer festival to celebrate the Obon holidays.
Here is a shot looking down the main street from the grounds of IzumoTaisha Shrine. You can see they blocked off the whole street all the way down to the large, gray concrete torii gate at the other end. Lots of people from my community turned out for the event, including many of my students.
I remember briefly stopping by this event after work last year, but I only looked around for about 30 minutes and then went home. I hadn't started teaching at that point last year and I was just an anonymous Westerner at that point.
This year, I stopped and chatted with tons of people and was stopped constantly by students. It was great to see so many of them out and enjoying themselves and not wearing their school uniform. :)
I was showing a new ALT from England around named Anna. She will be teaching at Taisha High School, so it was a good introduction to the community. EVERY student that stopped to chat with us - the first thing out of their mouth was "kanajo?"
Kanajo is Japanese for "girlfriend" - my kids are such gossip hounds!
The group of female JH students across the street in this pic started yelling "Jason-san!" before they even started to cross - I guess they missed seeing me during the summer break.
So many of my female students looked fantastic in their summer kimonos, but I didn't see any of my boys in their summer yukatas.
It was a really fun evening - I hope I get to go again next year.
-Jason
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