Inzai Bon Odori

This past Sunday we walked over to the nearby park to participate in the local festival. Our neighbor was one of the organizers of the event. I got to finnally wear my "Jinbei" and Anna wore her Yukata again for the dancing.

It has been very hot as of late here but that just made the beer all the more better. Many of my neighbors who I've drank together with were there too. As a result of the liquid courage, I decided to try my hand at the dancing with my daughter. All I did was keep an eye on the older women doing the dancing and follow what they were doing. It went fairly well.

On Tuesday our friends came down from Ibaraki to take my daughter and I to the beach at Kashima. Unfortunately, this was my daughters first visit to the ocean with waves this big. When I carried her out into the water she wanted to get back to the shore as soon as possible. The waves that looked taller than me really freaked her out.

As a result, she did not want to go into the water. Since it was extremely hot (90F or 35C) this put her in a bad mood pretty quickly. We had to get her into the water or out of the heat as soon as possible. We decided to get back into the car and start back home. She then slept for most of the day.