Here in Japan, summer is “matsuri”, or festival, season! There are festivals in towns and cities, from small as in Downtown Misawa to huge in cities like Sendai and Akita. The best festival this year, however, was the one that Forrest’s daycare threw for the kids! Forrest was given a special outfit with his name on it, and when he came there were 12 stations set up! Each station had a game or activity, that when completed, Forrest would get a stamp. Once he got all the stamps, he got a fun prize. The games and activities all had little prizes too. Forrest had a field day!
Pokemon is taken very seriously in Japan. Though Pokemon Go may have died down in the states, it is very much alive and well here. In our nearest “big” city, Hachinohe, the art museum has a limited-time exhibition for Pokemon art intricately handmade in traditional Japanese art styles. Going to the museum was a blast! Leanne and I went there on a date while Forrest was in daycare.
Every year in the summer, there are tons of festivals (known in Japanese as matsuris) in Japan. Right when we got back from Hokkaido, there was a festival in Misawa! We got ready in our festival gear and headed out the door!
Forrest’s class picture was up at the festival! Here Leanne is pointing to Forrest.Can you find Forrest?Forrest loved running through these!
One thing we learned at the festival is that Forrest loves to dance! We couldn’t get him away from the music!! He also invented a new dance that appears to be a cross between a rain dance and the chicken dance. Video posted below!
Hokkaido is the island in the northern-most part of Japan. We’ve been to big city Sapporo before the “Yuki Matsuri”, or Snow Festival, that happens in the middle of winter, but we’ve never seen the rest of the beautiful island. With 5 days off, we decided to make the most of our time and see as much of it as we could!
When we landed in Sapporo, we were greeted with the ongoing Summer Festival! Seriously, do they just party there all the time? The current festival was a beer festival, broken up into 5 parts. The first part was all the Suntory beers, second was Kirin, third was Asahi, fourth was Sapporo, and the fifth part was beers from around the world.
We stayed the night in Sapporo at a hotel with onsen, free nightly ice cream and ramen bowls, and free morning Yakult yogurt drinks. The next day we took off for Noboribetsu, a city known for its volcanic activity and fantastic onsets. The hotel we stayed at had 5 different types of onsens! These included a ferrous sulfate onsen, salt onsen, sodium onsen, and a sulfur onsen. Each has different minerals that provide different healing properties.
Hokkaido is known for its curry soup, and it did not disappoint!
In Noboribetsu, we went to “Hell Valley”, which has tons of active volcanic activity. No wonder the onsets here were so great!
Noboribetsu’s “Hell Valley”
Next up, Otaru, a city known for its European like architecture and canal. Here we went to a Brew House to try the local craft Otaru beer, the canal of course, a music box museum, hand-crafted glass stores (glass blowing is a specialty in Otaru), and shopping on the side streets.
Side streets in OtaruSomething’s not quite right with this guy.. Very cute fish though!The Music Box Museum in OtaruThe crabs at the Otaru fish market were bigger than Forrest!Ate super fresh seafood at the local fish market in Otaru.
Next up, Furano, a city known for its flowers. When we went, lavender was in full bloom. One of the places we went to in Furano was Ningle Terrace. This is a cute woodsy area with tons of little handicraft shops, all of which are log cabins. The atmosphere was so beautiful, and here we found Forrest’s favorite dessert: baked milk.
Ningle Terrace in Furano
Huge flower farm in Furano.Lavender and melon swirl ice cream. Forrest loved it!
Seeing Hokkaido in the summer was such a great experience! Hopefully we will get to continue to explore even more of Japan while we are here!
Forrest has been making lots of sounds and most have been nonsense gibberish. He has also been saying “dada,” but it never felt intentional until yesterday. He kept asking for Dada at the store, and was so happy when I joined Leanne and him, and he saw me! Then later we said, “where’s dada?” and he looked right at me, every time we tried!
Living near the snowiest region on Earth has its perks! The last couple of weekdays we had Forrest in daycare and went skiing at Okunakayama, about an hour and a half away. The first ski day was with my guy friends in Misawa and the second was with Leanne’s coworkers from the hospital.
Leanne was shredding the black diamonds and I did a jump over a ski ramp! Can’t wait to go skiing some more, especially while it’s so close and so cheap!
Japanese New Year is a lot like how my family celebrates New; it’s a very Family Central holiday. Leanne and I went to the grocery store early to get osechi, which are Bento boxes with lots of little different items Each of which is supposed to bring a separate fortune or luck for the year. Leanne also got everything needed to make peanut butter noodles, so we were fully ready to bring in the new year. On New Year’s Eve in japan, the main television channel of Japan nhkg plays a New Year’s Eve show called “Kohaku Uta Gassen,” or “Red White Song Battle.” A lot of the top bands in Japan, both modern and traditional music, will play in the red white battle. The red team is led by female singers, whereas the white team is led by male singers. However, it’s a very long show, so it is broken up by different random events. One of them was a huge room filled with dominos that we saw fall down into cool designs with, oddly enough, traditional Japanese music playing in the background. Another is a world record for most balls on the cup in a row. Either way, it was a very interesting and fun way to ring in the new year!
This was the osechi bento box.The first sunrise of 2025. In Japan, seeing the first sunrise is very important!
Living in Japan, so far away from home, could be an isolating experience. We are so, so fortunate to have such an amazing neighborhood filled with friends and love. We all got together to celebrate Christmas together.
A white Christmas in beautiful snowy northern Japan. Forrest has been trying to open gifts all month since they’ve been under the tree. He can finally open them up! Thankfully, Leanne got the holiday off!
Forrest is seriously so photogenic. He should be a model baby!So many presents! Best Christmas ever!!
Forrest opening up his first Christmas present!
Thank you Zahra for this wonderful toy!Leanne won me a Galaxy Tab in a holiday party raffle!
Thank you everyone for such wonderful gifts! We are so blessed to have such a wonderful loving family and that Forrest had an amazing first Christmas!
