子供の日

Today was Children's Day in Japan, which really means "Boy's Day".  They call it that a lot now, too.  We started with breakfast, but soon after it was time for lunch, so we went to a bakery and this happened.



This is the whole setup for Children's Day.  It's a bit like a Christmas tree in that you just sort of set it up and do nothing with it, except it's non-religious.  Lots of things like this in Japan aren't religious, just "traditional".

I then went for a bike ride.  It was finally a nice day, so I went exploring much further than I would have normally.

This shrine was just in a parking lot.  You'll see this a lot.

Here's the pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks!  It's super creepy!

Japan has plenty of nature going on.  It's just not as expansive as in America.

This shrine was tiny but had its own parking lot for whatever reason.  It might be important on a particular festival or something.

Baseball is the national pastime over here.  

More grass and things.

Did someone say "tennis court in the middle of a field?"  I just did, in my head.

I stopped and took a break with a Mitsuya Cider at this vending machine.

And I drank it with Jizo here.

And on the way back, I saw someone's lost briefcase float down the river.  It was far enough away from its owner that no one was chasing it.  Sad.

I ended up at the used book store again, and picked up two things for very little money.  On the left, a Japanese version of one of my favorite childhood games, Donkey Kong 64, and on the right, the image soundtrack to 3x3 Eyes, my favorite manga.  It's a bunch of early-90's pop interspersed with a multi-part audio drama (those are still big here).

When we went into the attic to get the little man for Children's Day, I found SO MUCH STUFF.  Their second son apparently had the same tastes I do now, except when he was into it it was all new.

That's four volumes of 3x3 Eyes, the 3x3 Eyes game that I bought a few weeks ago, King of Fighters '96, Street Fighter Alpha, the Street Fighter movie game, and a song called Tekken II that I like by a band I don't really know well..  If it's possible to be nostalgic for things that happened in another country when you were too young to appreciate them, then I nearly went comatose from all the reminiscing.  There's a whole lot more up there that I couldn't get to because it was getting too hot and the dust was giving me heartburn, but I think I picked out the stuff I really wanted to enjoy.