Hitting an all-time low

So here’s the new plan - try and finish the blog posts for last year before it’s more than a year since the events. Here we go then with September.

September turned out to be a very quiet month. We did a lot of travelling in August so maybe we were just tired.

Awaodori

Early September in Kaisei is time for the Awaodori festival. It’s a traditional dance and they have teams from all over that come and perform. One of the roads is closed off, people line the pavements, and of course the food stalls are all out. This is another event just like the fireworks that Nozomi’s sister has not been to in ages. So she joined us again as we headed out to grab some food, a cold beer, and find a good spot to sit and watch the dancers.

It was really cool to see so many different groups. Some clearly put in more effort than others but there’s something nice about just seeing a group of about 4 regular 30-somethings join in an event which has professional looking groups. The weather started off a bit cloudy but then turned to rain. That didn’t stop the dancers or us though! At the end of the event everyone joins in and we got dragged in as well. I didn’t have a clue what to do but I guess nobody cared :)

Hakushu

September is also Nozomi’s birthday. The original plan was to go mountain climbing in the North-West with her friends but then the weather turned on us. September is typhoon season in Japan and the forecast was for very heavy rains so we had to cancel that plan. Somehow Nozomi agreed to go and visit a whisky distillery. It is in a really nice setting but still wasn’t expecting her to go for that on her birthday. And of course she agreed to drive back so I could have a dram or two.

We finished off September with a trip to Ito for Nozomi’s father’s birthday. I might have mentioned this before; These days Nozomi’s family tend to go to some place they can chill with the whole family, including her grandma. So a day of eating some good food and chilling in the hot springs. Happy days.