festivals galore

liz and i went to the kenshin matsuri on monday night. it's a festival celebrating this guy who was a badass during the samurai era. he united a bunch of fighters and conquered a lot of land, displacing some ruler nobody liked anyway. he was from a town, and eventually settled and died there, that's only one train stop away. i'm obviously over simplifying...just look at the pics.


this man is making okonomiyaki. it's pancake batter with cabbage, pork, shrimp, some red vegetables, corn and an egg [and some weird lil' dried shrimp in the far right tray]. they slather it with a brown sauce and mayo [i've learned 'mayonaizu nashi onegaishimasu' which means no mayo, thanks'] it's their fair food. and to think we deep fry candy bars, what fattys.


near a hundred men and women dress in armor and march to a huge field where they re-enact a battle. this is not such a good picture. we couldn't get very close...after we got reprimanded for standing where you aren't supposed to apparently.


while these people provide the narrative, i think. we couldn't understand anything they were saying.


there was a huge crowd. we saw one other foreigner. also ran into a japanese guy at the yakiniku stand who had lived in new jersey for a while. his english was great. too bad he only gets to practice on silly american girls at random festivals.