Kakunodate

Tricia, Jonas and I over the weekend met a couple of friends Andrew and Mary Ellen, who are on the same JET program, in a town called Kakunodate to check out a bunch of old samurai houses and wander around someplace other than Akita City. The houses (link to pics below) were old and picturesque and had been preserved surprisingly well. Some were actually still private residences, but others were public museums that you could walk through. You could, but I didn’t, because the door frames were built to accommodate samurai who must have topped out at around 5’3. Really, I don’t think there was much to see other than a bunch of empty rooms, so it doesn’t seem like Jonas and I missed much. But the scenery was great, as was the company. And we were in luck. The town festival was in full swing, which made the trip more enjoyable as the sidewalks were lined with beer and food vendors and the streets were filled with traditional Japanese floats that were built and pulled by individual neighborhoods in Kakunodate (at least that’s my understanding). At the end of the weekend, the festival peaks when the participants ram all the floats into each other in giant orgy of celebratory destruction. Sadly, we missed this part. Jonas fell asleep and we had to head back home. But it was a good weekend.

And as you can see below, Jonas was the real attraction of the festival. He got much more attention than he typically does back in Akita City, which is saying something, because even in the city he tends to draw a crowd. At one point, there were four or five professional photographers surrounding us trying to get some good shots of Jonas. As the photos illustrate, Jonas also was popular with the ladies.






For more photos, click below: