For those of you who missed it!

Which was everyone, because I wasn't blogging and didn't have internet at my house way back in the dark days of early August.

So August is "ghost-story month", mostly because (and I am not making this up) it is so fiendishly hot that they tell ghost stories so you will "get the chills". You can't make that up. It's too ridiculous.

Also there is a vague connection to Oban (sp?), which is a festival honoring your passed on kin-folk. They have beautiful lantern-lighting festivals at night and sometimes send them down rivers and such. It's quite eerily pretty. They don't do that in Tano. We have a lot of older people and I think that hits too close to home. No one likes to be reminded of our own mortality.

Anyhoo.

So the real thing about August is it is so hot, every town decides the way to beat the heat is to have a dance festival where one dresses in elaborate and heavy traditional outfits, wears a lot of make-up (both boys and girls sometimes) and performs original dances for competitions. It gets pretty crazy and the teams really get into it. The different towns have their own festivals at different times so you can go "matsuri-hopping", as I did. Yasuda, Kochi proper, Kitagawa, Nahari, and somewhere else, one I can't remember now. Sorry "nani-cho".

I didn't even get a picture of the fabulous talent act
that came on before these ladies. Three fellows in black
unitards, as if they had stepped right off the
set of Blazing Saddles. But these chicks were
the second-best. 

Traditional Mochi toss at the beginning of every festival.
Quite a few people have broken arms in the next picture.
I still don't know how to prepare it. My three mochi cakes are in
my freezer. I may throw them out at next year's festivities... 

Algerian Gyro in Nahari. Who would have thought?

Nahari　花火

Nahari post-sunset, pre-nightfall

This is the great town of Tano. Those are 20,00 blue and white
origami cranes. I helped make the 20 on the right, holding in place
the photos of the old ladies making the 20,000. 

Kids catching fishies in Yasuda

Yosakoi dancers in Tano. I am one of these! Just not one in front of the camera...