The crappy weather from yesterday had completely cleared up when I woke up today, so I decided to go for a little expedition. I hoped onto the train and headed to Hachioji, one of the outlying areas of Tokyo, and when I say 'Outlying' I mean the last section of the Tokyo prefecture before the next one begins.
I headed this way to take in the Hachioji ginkgo festival. Ginkgo is a type of tree that turns a fantastic shade of golden yellow in the fall, and the area from Hachioji to Takao is a 4km stretch of road lined with these trees. Just an awesome sight to see and there is a gorgeous view of Mt Takao in the background.
The festival itself was pretty interesting, not as good as the Yosakoi but still pretty interesting. The streets were lined all the way along with stalls of people selling clothes, japanese plates and cups, old toys (a lot of the stalls had these, it was a very child themed festival). And plenty of food stalls selling the usual festival foods - namely Takoyaki (octopus balls) and Yakisoba (fried noodles) both very tasty, but the Takoyaki in particular was an art from to watch being cooked. I highly recommend looking up videos on youtube because I cant describe the subtle precision needed for each single Takoyaki. There were at least two parades going up the street - The first was a procession of groups of marching bands made up of children who looked no older than 12, but all giving a fantastic performance on flutes, drums and all kinds of instruments. The second was a chain of classic cars, some of which wouldn't look out of place in a Sean Connery Bond film.
But the best bit of the festival was that you had to go around collecting stamps. Only instead of a piece of paper, the stamp book is a block of wood. And instead of a stamp, people used a burning hot brand to burn the writing into the wood. Best Game Ever!
But as I said, it wasn't massively exciting. Most of the stalls started to get pretty similar after a while, so I walked back towards the station and jumped on for a couple more minutes to the far end. The views didn't get any better but there were some cool Noh dancers performing on the street. And a nice group of calendar sells roped me into buying something. But after that it was time to turn around and head back to Akihabara. Wandered for a little while around some of the shops but didn't buy anything, just taking a quick peek. The rest of the day was watching anime and cleaning up the files on my computer. Nothing very exciting, but the mornings outing more than made up for it I think.
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