Hokkaido Life: Day 9

My legs... oh my legs.. I can't feel my legs...

and that is how the morning began at around 10am, My bones were aching and I was in pain from the run and very stiff when I woke up. Thankfully though the day was free and there really wasn't anything to do. So it'll be hard to make this a long blog post. What I can say however is that the time for cleaning had arrived!

My first task was to get some food and supplies from the local seicomart which included a nice can of bug spray because the war was about to begin between man and bug. So far we had only seen three bugs in the house so it was evident that we were winning thus far and after today's cleaning, there wouldn't be any chance of bugs coming in.

In all I vacuumed the entire house including all the corners, ceilings, behind and under furniture as well as wiping down several surfaces with a cloth. Everywhere was clean and all the rubbish was thrown away and my room was tidy. However it wasn't enough, to further ensure our safety against bug threats I opened the new can of bug spray and lined ALL the door frames, ALL the window frames and ALL the air vents with bug spray. Oh and the letter box! The whole process took around 5 hours and I was exhausted afterwards doing it all myself.

However that night we had something very special arranged. The eve of the shrine festival, Now, little culture lesson; in Japan, shrines are literally everywhere. You can't not help but accidentally find one and in Tokyo, you can even turn it into a game like 'where's waldo'. I knew from films and anime what a evening shrine festival was like but all of those had taken place in very populated areas so it was very interesting to see the contrast in real life in a small area.

Small is definitely the word I would use. A lot of people came but in terms of stalls and entertainment it was fairly restricted. This wasn't a bad thing of course and I loved the entire thing. Though we did suffer for a moment against the various flies and mosquitoes but we were able to borrow some spray from the Yosakoi squad who were using some.

The festival consisted of a food area which contained various things from frankfurters to beef kebab things and also a small raffle where I won a badge. The main events took place on the stage that had been setup. First up was the brass band which played songs mostly from anime and TV so I knew all of them which made me really happy and put me into a good mood since anime is one of my favourite things.

Once the band had finished we had a dance performance from the Yosakoi group which we had seen at the welcome party. They were just as good as they were the other day and I really can't wait to try it for myself. It was great to watch them and they were so skilled at dancing.

Afterwards we had something called Mochi Maki where they basically throw hard sweets at the crowd and you're meant to take them home and boil them before eating, something which Calvin learnt the hard way :P It was really fun and everyone was really super energetic and desperate to catch some. Afterwards there was a local guy who was doing some sort of live concert where he was singing Japanese songs. He was really good and everyone was sat on the floor on this big mat that had been laid out on the floor. If I were to guess, I would say there was maybe between 50 - 100 people present.

Finally for the night we played bingo which is very different compared to bingo back home. Here there are a lot more prizes up for grabs which includes toilet paper though to be fair, it's pretty expensive here so it makes for a great bingo prize. There were about 40 prizes available with 10 really expensive prizes. I came close to winning many times but sadly I was always one number away. The announcer was so cool and he made it really entertaining to take part in.

I left on my own as my partner had left earlier. I didn't win anything sadly but I had a really good time at the eve of the shrine festival and headed back home to the house and climbed into bed after having a good day. Thankfully though this time the house was nice and clean.

Oyasumi!!