郡上祭り (Gujo Festival)

I don't know why I've decided to always write my titles in Japanese and English lately. But I have, and so there it is.

Anyhow, so after our lovely day at Ise Shrine, we slept in and had a lovely lazy day. Abby made okonomiyaki, so I got to try to first real vegan okonomiyaki, and it was delicious beyond belief. It makes me want to move to Gifu just to have them around more often to make me delicious food. (I'm a user, what can I say?)

For those of you that don't know, okonomiyaki is basically a Japanese vegetable stuffed pancake. Usually, it's stuffed with cabbage, but Abby's version had none. It did have this delicious green leafy Chinese vegetable thing, though. Yum!

Then we had the perfect ending to a lazy day (during which I did my best to attempt to study)! Abby's friend Shio came to pick us up to bring us to her house, where her mother put us in yukata. It was SO cool - her mother had TONS of old yukata and a huge box of obis. She seemed quite experienced at obi tying, and she tied a different style bow for all of us - me, Abby, Shio, and Riho.

The boys decided not to wear yukata. :-(

Around 8:00 PMish, we headed over to Gujo for the all-night dancing festival. Gujo's a pretty small but extremely gorgeous town which is famous for it's all night Obon Dancing festivals, during which, instead of dancing Bon Odori, you dance the Gujo Odori, which is really quite similar, but somehow much more difficult. We danced until about midnight (which was long enough to leave me exhausted beyond belief, and I literally fell asleep the second I hit the futon when we returned to Matt and Abby's).

Despite being there for approximately 4 to 5 hours, I think I only managed to pick up on one of the many dances (which I promptly forgot). I did, however, manage to step on the feet of about 10 different people and almost elbow some poor woman in the face. Apparently dancing is not for me. Which I knew beforehand, but what can I say, quite like singing, I love it anyway!

Abby and Shio dancing it up!

Matt and Abby's friends were super great, and we had an absolutely fabulous time just hanging out in Gujo and dancing! Even if I was slightly intimidated by Abby and Shio's mad dancing skills, since Riho and Shio's husbands were in the same lacking the coordination necessary to dance boat as I was.


Both of these are things you're probably NOT supposed to do in a yukata. And my shoes - definitely shoes you're NOT supposed to wear with yukata!

A definite success of a night, and I am looking forward to my next all night dancing festival! :-)

We were all basically dead when we woke up the next morning (and I'm sure Matt and Abby won't appreciate me taking a picture of our deadness, but I'm doing it anyway).

I was feeling kind of sick and headachy, so I headed home fairly earlyish (which was around 4PM, but we woke up late, so it felt early), and when I got home, I had some delicious vegan Doughnut Plant doughnuts waiting for me that Alexis had brought back from Tokyo. There were three, and I ate two and immediately felt better. Then I made peanut butter cookies and ate about 12 of them. I think I might have been in overly hot Gifu sugar (and maybe protein) withdrawal.

As is becoming usual when I do things with Abby and Matt, Abby's blogging of the event is way more interesting and comprehensible with better pictures. SO check it out!

And with that, お盆休み、以上です。