Dragon Boats

Dragon Boat (Ladies)

Wow what a day - Tom's in bed now and we can't wait until we can head upstairs ourselves.

So the Pampers were better than the other brand of nappy but he still leaked a little - but with the waterproof sheet in place it wasn't as bad as the night before.  Unfortunately, he soiled his nappy this morning so no opportunity for a poo on the loo and a sticker this morning.

Today was dragon boat racing day and what a glorious day for it - blue sky, no clouds and hot, hot, hot. Weather forecast said 24, but we reckon it must have been 30 ish - it was roasting.

Working hard

We set off down to Port Park around 10am. When we got to the covered shopping street we saw some food stalls, everyone was heading that way so we decided to follow them. We weren't prepared for the sheer number of stalls - there were hundreds.







Most of them were selling snacks:

Colourful Food Stalls

+ Takoyaki (octopus pancake balls)
+ Karaage
+ Yakitori (grilled marinated chicken on sticks)
+ Horumon (grilled cow intestine)
+ Sausages on sticks
+ Mochi on sticks
+ Okonomiyaki
+ Hashimaki (Okonomiyaki wrapped round chopsticks)
+ Ikayaki (grilled squid on sticks)
+ Yakisoba (a type of fried noodles)
+ Sweet potatoes on a stick
+ Chips
+ Pineapple on sticks
+ Candy covered bananas on sticks
+ Toffee apples
+ Taiyaki (fish-shaped cakes filled with red bean paste)
+ Castella (small sponge cakes baked in various shaped moulds)
+ Kakigohri (ground ice flavoured with ultra-sweet syrups)

Cheeky

And many more that I can't remember. We were in 7th heaven and couldn't wait for lunch time. Not all of them were food stalls. There were stalls selling toys (mainly toy guns), stalls where you could do some fishing (real fish - but very small), other fishing stalls - plastic fish for children, but mainly food. Don't think their food safety laws are as stringent as here, as we saw at least one stall holder cooking with a cigarette in his mouth!

We decided to go to the water front to see what was going on. We found a space no worries and watched a couple of races - the course wasn't that long, however they had to paddle to the end, then round a pole and back to the start which made it interesting. This being Japan, every team took it very seriously making it good viewing. Tom said it was too noisy (there was a lot of drumming going on) but he took it in his stride.

Kimonos

Samurai

After a while he requested a go on the funny slide so we went to some stalls and got some Takoyaki and Chicken Karaage and made our way to the park. The park was a little busier than previous times but it didn't phase Tom too much and he had a good play whilst Matt and I had good nosh (Tom had had a massive breakfast and so wasn't too interested). After a while we made our way back to the waterfront to watch some more racing and eat a sausage on a stick and drink a cup of ground ice with some horribly sickly sweet syrup on it, then we headed up the main street to view other entertainment. We came across a production of Samurai soldiers and ninjas playing out a fight. Their costumes were amazing, but their acting and swords were quite mediocre (pathetic - Matt). A ninja, however, gave Tom a shuriken (throwing star) which he liked. I found 2 ladies in kimonos and took a sly photo and we saw a dancing troupe. If we had stayed on this main street for the whole day I think we would have seen a bit of every aspect of Japanese culture. However, by now Tom was looking very tired so we headed on to a shop to buy some dinner (our plans for a big lunch were thwarted by the fact it was sooooo hot). We put Tom in a trolley (trollies here are very different to the UK - they are more like pushchairs with space for a basket - Tom doesn't care though, as long as he doesn't have to walk he is happy) found him another football to replace the lost one from yesterday and got some Yakitori, ebi chilli and sushi for dinner (too hot to cook). Oh AND we saw some Dr Yellow trainers - not sure we will be able to help ourselves - I think our Christmas shopping might commence soon!

Festivalled Out

Matt carried a very tired little boy back to the apartment on his shoulders, he went straight to bed in just his nappy whilst Matt and I processed the dozens of photos and video we took. Once Tom was up we had a game of football before dinner. One thing to say about Tom - his eating has been good. Obviously the food here is very different to home - but he has tried everything we have given him, albeit we have to nag him to eat everything up, he generally does eat up. He has discovered a real love of ebi (prawns) since getting here which is great but they are our favourites too and now we are getting less of them (I guess we must love him)

We all caught the sun today - Matt and I have various pink areas - I'm hoping mine will go brown over night as they aren't too bad. We will see what happens to Matt. Tom had slight rosy arms - nothing to worry about. We were all wearing factor 50 sun cream, just that either we didn't apply it early enough or missed bits out.

Dr Yellow is due to zoom through Aioi Shinkansen station tomorrow we have booked tickets to be back in time for it - hopefully there won't be a problem with the line like there was last week...

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Location:Aioi