Fête des Vendanges

Our local Fête des Vendanges, a fall harvest festival, took place a couple weeks ago. Here: parade floats (in the parade-float barn) covered in fresh flowers.

Ferrara Balloons Festival

The Ferrara Balloons Festival was happening while we were in town. The balloons were scheduled to go up at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily. We biked out to the fairgrounds to see the balloons going up on our second afternoon. We arrived early, as if we were in Switzerland, watched an empty field for a good long time. Around 5:30, the basket, which held 25 people, was delivered to the field and tipped on its side. Twenty minutes later, an army of people started unrolling this balloon. It wasn't airborne until 6:30. Italian time is so different from Swiss time.

Neuchâtel turns 1000

This weekend the town of Neuchâtel is celebrating its 1000-year anniversary. We walked to the center of town
last night to see the festivities. This is the square where the farmers' market sets up three times a week.

Sendai Tanabata parade

The Sendai tanabata parade included multigenerational dance troupes, marching bands, and traditional drummers.

The audience sat in large ovals around the median strip in the boulevard, and the performers paraded around the ovals,

progressing from one oval to the next every half hour.

Sendai Tanabata festival

We visited Sendai during their Tanabata festival. The train station and main shopping district were filled with 

people (the town's population triples in size during the festival) and with these large paper decorations whose

streamers hang down to about shoulder height.

Japan week: Hirosaki

With all the news out of Japan these days, I have been looking over the photos we took last summer and found

a few to share. Zak had a 10-week fellowship to do research at Tokodai University in Tokyo. I joined him

for three weeks in late July and early August.

We took a week-long trip to the northern half of Honshu, and spent two nights in Hirosaki during their Neputa festival. Every night during the festival, there are parades of large floats like the one above, that are pulled, carried,
or driven down the street, accompanied by drummers and flutes. Here's a link to a Youtube video of one night
of last year's festival.

(I added a map of Japan with pushpins on the map page.)