Fessin' Up.

When my PC contracted its Spyware problem, I missed out on a few events over the last few weeks. One in particular was a pretty funky festival that was held in the courtyard outside of Fesan in front of Morioka Station. I finished joining a couple matrimonially and was about to catch the Shink home when I encountered a gathering. All of my inquiries trying to find out exactly what was going on proved fruitless but I decided to catch a later train, hoist a few brew and soak in the newly sunny sky.

Near as I can figure, based on the button I bought, it's called Takata.

I first came across several old men banging on drums and decided to just enjoy my squid and then things began to get interesting...

As you can see a dragon appeared, was fed by members of the audience and then was defeated by a goofy-looking red-faced guy!

Next I ate a massive wiener only to affronted by another parade. This time around it was a bunch of kids dressed up in freaky masks flanked by some macho Samurai-archer dudes. (Though I didn't snap a picture of her, one of the old ladies sitting next to me, appeared as though she was wearing a mask--she wasn't.)

Next up were some pretty lame local artistes, first up was Yuuko singing a folksy tune called PaceMaker. She was pretty good and later I lauded her for it, and she nabbed me as I was leaving and handed me a CD! (I listened to it the other day for the first and last time-meh.) The next guy was a rocker Makoto Hiranai who I really enjoyed. Then there was an a cappella group who were amusingly lame and they finished with the Japanese version of the Mickey Mouse theme which I joined in with a "Hey Hey Hey" at the appropriate time.

Surprisingly I found the tune on YouTube! Check out the lyrics at the 1.20 mark, somewhat different.

The show would continue for another hour but there was no convenient train at that time, so I skedaddled to the tracks but not until buying some Rusk (double-baked bread. Kind of like flavoured pre-diced croutons.)