Yesterday, we drove to Akita for some good eats: Inaniwa udon for lunch, and Yokote yakisoba for dinner. (Both are specialty noodle dishes of Akita.)

Anyway, Akita lies on the other side of the Ou Sanmyaku, the mountain ridge running through the middle of Tohoku, and crossing the mountains meant plenty of tunnels.

Before we moved here, our lives were full of noise. Of course there were always some sounds that stood out from the background noise. A passing train, the morning alarm clock, Aki woofing at the neighbor dogs. But behind it all there was a constant barrage of noise, all blended together into an indistinguishable wall of sound that we learned to ignore.

But here, somehow it's different. Life is full of sounds. This is a city, so there are still the sounds of traffic, but it doesn't drown everything else out. All the sounds are distinct, from the frogs of late spring to the distant pops of summer fireworks, from the honking of swans calling each other in the evening to the electric whine of a departing Yamabiko shinkansen train. Earthquakes, too, create a unique sound.

As I write this, I can hear an emergency vehicle's siren - something we only hear once every few weeks.

Tonight we took a short walk along the river towards the railroad tracks. We could hear the cicadas singing in the trees, whose leaves were rustling in the breeze along the babbling Waga river. The splashing of water over rocks echoed between the rail bridges, and the local train gave a toot on its whistle before rattling across, soon to be followed by the whoooooosh of a bullet train headed the other direction. The wind occasionally brought us sounds of distant traffic, crossing one of the bridges. We could hear the caws of ravens wheeling in the sky, and when they came close we could hear their wings beat the air for lift.

Here is the sunset we listened to tonight.

I traveled to Morioka on Thursday to get permission to work on my current visa, which I couldn't otherwise do (it's the dreaded "dependent visa"). I *heart* the Morioka immigration office -- the staff was cordial, informative, and had me out the door with my permit in about 20 minutes, if that. So I took the rest of the afternoon to poke around a bit, beginning with lunch at the 'Bucks. Hey, I had to investigate the possibility of cupcakes (denied!).

If the one especially posh street I traversed is representative of the city, Morioka is all about food, art, spas/salons, and fashion. I am a fan. Had I worn a hat, I might have tossed it in the air, I liked Morioka so much. As it was, I refrained from tossing the Weitzmans in the air for fear that their 3" heels would've taken someone's eye out had I failed to catch them.



This monument is located in Iwate Park, in the middle of Morioka. Iwate Park is built on the ruins of the former Morioka Castle; its height allows for beautiful views of the city against its mountain backdrop.

I hope I'm not stepping on any, ahem, non-densha otaku toes by posting this:



This little guy appears on some of the East Japan Railway Company's (or JR East) trains. I think he's adorable.

The festival came to an end Monday night with a two-hour fireworks display. To Americans, that sounds excessive, but it was actually quite nice. It wasn't a continuous barrage of explosions; instead, it was a series of vignettes, sometimes just a single firework and sometimes a grouping, separated by short breaks (up to several minutes).

The relaxed pace and long show meant that families set up picnics where they could hang out, chat, eat, drink, and watch the fireworks together, and we did, too. Unfortunately, since we didn't know exactly where they would be launching, we set up our picnic where a utility pole would be exactly in the way. Oh well, next year we'll know!

Onikenbai isn't the only dance performed during Michinoku Geinou Matsuri, but it is the most famous.

The first big event of Michinoku Geinou Matsuri is the Mikoshi Parade. More than one thousand children march, chant, and whistle in groups while hoisting their hand-made mikoshi, or demon heads. The amount of energy on display was astonishing.

In final preparations for the opening of Michinoku Geinou Matsuri, various performance groups were unloading their large demon head creations from the world's tiniest trucks. Later they would march, chant, whistle, and hoist the demon heads up and down with great enthusiasm. Some of the demon heads looked quite fierce, others were rather abstract, and then there was this cartoony guy.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think he is Oni Marukun, a character created 13 years ago to promote a school. After the school opened, he was adopted as a mascot by the Kitakami tourism bureau because his design is based on the city's Onikenbai sword dance demons.

Lanterns? Check. Banners? Check. Rented flood lights to illuminate the dancing demons at night? Check.

Michinoku Geinou Matsuri ("North Country Performing Arts Festival") starts tomorrow. This is a major festival of Kitakami, and is famous for Onikenbai, the "Demon Sword Dance". The three-day festival officially starts tomorrow, and ends Monday with a grand fireworks display.

Our previous spider has moved on, and this one came to replace it. We discovered it in the morning, which is a bit more auspicious. (Later, I saw it again at night. This spider seems to offer 24-hour service.)

Its web is really quite distinctive, too - the center is kind of fluffy, with a vertical "ladder" of thick webbing extending above and below it.