Adventures in Japan

Day 29: The Big Cool Floats of Aomori

Before we get to the big cool floats, let me point out one other thing about Morioka that was kinda interesting.


This sculpture. It was all shiny and spiny. It spins, you see, that part is hard to capture in photographs. The sculpture saw us off from the bus stand.


There were no cool sculptures there to greet us at Aomori, but there was plenty of coolness to be found.

Y'see Theo, Aomori is known for its great big festival that features great big floats. Great big floats made of wood wire and paper. Lit from the inside. Dramatic, exciting, glowy paper floats paraded around on the backs of throngs of folks. With singing and dancing.

Sounds like a good time. If we ever come back to Japan (a more when-like if you will never see), we might have to give this festival a good looking over.

Japanese language lesson time!!!! Ao means blue (but also green, they have a word for green but it is not always used. Traffic lights in this country, for example, are called blue even though they are green). Mori means forest. Aomori means 'blu/green forest. Which is as good a way as any to describe where the forest meets the sea.

Lovely bit of land, this. I had some scallop flavoured soft ice cream and soaked in the view. Just be assured that for the rest of these posts, wherever we are staying is known for one variety of seafood or another. Today it is scallops.

Fishily refreshed, we set off for the floats. They keep a selection of some of the previous years' highlights in a little park outside of town. The park was nice, full of tall skinny trees. The sun was out, the sky was blue and they were playing festival music all throughout the park.


We looked at the floats. You should too.


Just please keep in mind that these photos are not a patch on the real things. So colourful, so bright, so dynamic, so awesome.


And big. I cannot imagine hauling these things around for hours on end in the middle of August. Blech. The music would inspire for a while, but if our time spent today is any indicator, that music can get old.

We ended our day in a street stall. Yatai, you may recall, is the name for such things. There is a small street in Aomori lined with yatai. All of them smelled delicious and looked inviting. A kind old lady dragged us inside her shop and we stayed there for around a hundred bucks worth of time. We ate and drank more than that, but that is all we were charged. And they were thoughtful enough to play American hip hop and show American movies while we were there.

The pain in my foot is moving up my leg, screwing around with my calf. In case you were wondering.