around 530pm, we started getting ready for the bon odori festival. hiroko dressed me and lauren up in her yukatas!



and lauren! she looks awesome in her black yukata. lots of people complimented her. one friend said that she looks like the sister-leader of a triad society haha.


little kanoko was going as well! kanoko hates taking photographs by the way, so i was pretty proud of myself when i took a shot like this of her. she wasn't posing for me, it just so happens that she was trying to cover her face and i caught it


after that, she wouldn't allow anymore pictures

about 6+pm, we arrived at the gathering place for the bon odori and saw eun-geong waiting there already

went in to the dinner area and started photo-spamming
chea-san (from cambodia) with his host family's kid. he's seriously damn fatherly

managed to take our family photo as well but kanoko looks so mortified

group photo!


haredy (from egypt) didn't wear a yukata. sad.

lauren was wearing makoto's geta because hiroko's geta was too small for her. she later found that a random grandpa wore exactly the same geta as her. lol.

we then took a short walk to the actual matsuri scene.

what you do here is basically dance in a gigantic circle that is made up of groups of people (from schools, organizations, etc), and do a series of 11 movements repetitively until 1 huge round is finished. there are water stops at the corner of the huge circle as well.


these people on the stage sang for the repetitive song

not knowing how to dance, we followed in anyway and soon knew how to move because we were repeating it for a million times





it was tiring but pretty fun, especially when we messed up the dance steps to take photos like those above hahah




we managed to also get a quick look around the festival area when we reached our 2nd water stop. lots of stalls were set up here selling yummy food. a pity we didn't get too much time to look around because it started to rain then!


we hurried back to our parking area and waited for the 9pm hanabi to start
while waiting i played around with kanoko and we managed to trick her into taking this wonderful photo!!! WOW thanks lauren. i seriously don't know of any kids who would say that she doesn't like to look at herself in photographs. really mezurashii (rare).

somehow kanoko looks like yingxuan when she has her hair tied up.





tried to take a photo of me and the hanabi but it ended up blurred. and after this photo, it was the end of the hanabi!

it was a lovely end to our wonderful day :D

26th july
it's another hanabi, at sumidagawa (near asakusa)!
finally i get　to have a decent hanabi. went to uniqlo with daryl to get his yukata and returned about 3pm. tried to figure out how to wear my yukata with all the youtube videos and manuals, but nothing helped at all! in the end kiki came to help me with my obi and we were able to finally set out atound 5pm. it turned out that phoebe had gotten the same yukata as me! well go figure, it's from uniqlo so even though i prayed hard it wouldn't happen, there's still a chance it might.

we were hungry when we got there so we got some bentous off matsuya (the departmental store, not the gyu-don yes). there was like tons of people heading towards asakusa already.





tako yaki tasted weird.

after lunch/dinner, we walked along the bridge for a good shot of the fireworks.


hanabi is so tiring because you have to walk a lot to find a good spot to watch the fireworks. and there's so many policemen around telling you to NOT stop to look, but keep on walking, ensuring that the place is always passable.

my best shot



on the way, we bought some ice cream. mine and daryl's was the green tea soy bean flavoured one. nice!!

we also visited kaminarimon, where the hongkongers tried their luck at omikuji and me and daryl tried the monjayaki on a stick.

our back

and our feet

could see the fireworks from here too.


some paper ball game where you could take these little balls home if you manage to pick it up with a thin piece of tissue (provided it doesn't get soaked when it touched the waters and become feeble)

huge chunk of ice

pagoda near kaminarimon

and the night food street

some kind of pancake from china

here's where we tried the stick monjayaki where you have to put the mayonnaise and sauce on yourself




another pagoda

and the shopping streets! strange doggie hairstyle

doing phoebe's favourite sword stance

went past a water dispenser machine that has a lucky draw slot (for extra free drinks) whenever you buy something from it

walked along some unknown streets with pretty shop covers and a nostalgic feeling of sitting on the streets and feasting. the foods didn't look that expensive too.





and before we left we found a photo board

when we tried to get home, we couldn't squeeze into the station! and it was hardly breathable and sooo stuffy so we ended up taking a 45mins bus ride to sugamo.


and went to the arcade nearby

to take purikura there!



finally reached home around 1am, where we bought macdonald's.


and i had aurelie and milla come to my rescue to unlock the door. love them!