The street leading up to the festival street.
The street entrance to the shopping street that holds the festival - this is the less popular end.
A stand set up for kakigori, or shaved ice with syrup. The flavor list is cola, strawberry, melon, peach, mango, lemon and "blue hawaii" (which is usually lemon lime).
Children's tanabata wishes hanging outside their school.
A close up of the wishes with an eye toward getting their pictures in the shot (but glare interfered).
Decorations hanging near the end of the street which is not covered by a roof. Those tables are not usually there (during non-festival times, there's no place to sit).
The man on the left is setting up to sell soda and beer.
Homemade wind-chime style decorations made from recycled trash (cups and PET bottles).
Grab bags (fukubukuro) for sale along with various items from a store that seems to be selling used novelty clothes.
Umbrellas decorated by kids as tanabata decorations.
More tables set up specifically for the festival. These are on a side street near the shopping street.
" Kids for sale! Get your cheap child labor at a discount price!"
Preparing for the goldfish games by fishing out the dead ones.
An Indian restaurant sets up (left) next to a bakery (right).
The "Good Morning" bakery. We used to love this place, but they remodeled and changed their array of baked goods so there's nothing good anymore.
The liquor shop sets up for pasta paella, sangria, and crepe selling.
Utakaraya, the local discount fresh food shop.
Kids playing a popular festival balloon game.
"Pan-chan" (pan = bread) trinkets for sale alongside other tacky items.
Takoyaki making (takoyaki = octopus balls)
Taiyaki making. Taiyaki is a Japanese pastry with bean, custard, or other type of filling. It looks like a fish (tai = fish).
Another shaved ice seller.
Daigaku-imo (sugar-glazed sweet potato) strips.
Okonomiyaki - a sort of omelet with noodles, cabbage, fish sauce, and eggs.
Anpanman (a children's cartoon superhero made of bread) chocolates.
Hermit crabs for about $5.
A shop that specializes in selling items from Okinawa.
Women's shirts for about $5 a shirt. The front one says, "Goddess, Happy Surf Wave".
Sony Avic electronics store.
A mechanized tarantula which moved and made sounds. It's stationed outside of a Sony electronics shop.
Rice cookers for sale next to the giant tarantula.
Girls take pictures of the decorations in the very next photo.
The office of our cable television company.
A foreign man leading a group of school kids by the hand. I wonder if they are students of the small "Bell International School" in our neighborhood.
Decorations outside of a shop that sells a lot of traditional Japanese souvenirs.
The souvenir shop itself - it sells a ton of nice stuff which I used to buy and send home as gifts until people got bored with what I sent.
The silly mascot for the festival with huge eyes and a peace sign.
A festival "station" where you can buy souvenir pins, get free fans, and various types of information about the festival.
Dog in a baby buggy.
Furoshiki, a large handkerchief-type of material used to carry bento (lunch boxes), folded into the shape of a hapi coat (a short coat usually worn by men).
The festival station area with boxes of souvenir junk read to sell.
Pieces of paper for a children's drawing contest.
More franks for sale.
Sign in front of a cell phone shop telling people that the shop changed locations.
An Alice in Wonderland decoration (the Queen of Hearts men).
A new 100 yen shop.
Grilled corn on the cob. Japanese don't eat corn with butter like Americans do.
Ramune, a Japanese soda which comes in many flavors. It is sold in glass bottles with a marble in the top to help keep the carbonation in.
Cucumbers, tomatoes and watermelon being sold in front of a shop that offers juice drinks.
Advertising for the next festival, a jazz festival, on October 23 and 24.
A guy shouts in front of a shoe shop having a sale.
A woman gives out samples of something called "spicy pasta".
The view as you approach the opposite end of the shopping street near the train station (which is where the action is at).
A little girl stuck selling drinks and noodles.
Kids in Japan often ride in the front or back of their mother's bicycle baskets. They do so without straps or safety harnesses. If Mom, crashes, it could be ugly.
The approach to the local JR (Japan Railway) station.
People handing out flyers just across the street from the station.
Pictures of festivals past posted across from the station.
The station entrance (Edy's Bread is a bakery in the station).
More pictures of festivals past.
The Pearl Road (the shopping street) entrance) across from the station.
Stamping stations inside the station. Kids have cards they put a stamp on when they visit a particular station.
A kid's father helps him with the stamping.
Escalators leading up to the train platform.
The Starbucks in the station.
Special frappucinos for the Japanese market (I presume).
A rare female train conductor signals with her hand. To the left is the festival lantern display (those paper lanterns are not there normally).
The train platform at our local train station. The yellow strips are textured so that blind people can feel with their feet where to stand and wait.
The street view at night from the platform.
Home, sweet, home.
An ad for a burger joint near the station that once ripped off my husband when he made a take-out order.
Bored people standing around the station in front of New Days convenience store and texting.
Girls in yukata handing out flyers at the station.
Wilting in the heat at Mickey D's. You can see the girls on the left are melting away.
Beer, franks, soda, and brain melting heat and humidity.
A woman shouts about the food at a German bakery.
The woman on the right was feeding the cucumber on a stick to the one on the left.
Family Mart convenience store.
Yo-yos and other toys for sale.
A fruit, jelly and condensed milk desert.
The sign on the left says "sugar water" and the one on the right says "squid". It doesn't sound like a good combination.
Weenies on sticks.
A jewelery sale.
Though all of the weenies look the same to me, I'm sure he's picking out the very BEST one.
Yakitori, grilled chicken on sticks, for sale.
More Alic in Wonderland decorations.
Another view of the festival "station" and its sales of souvenirs.
Pork products for sale - ham, bacon, and God knows what else.
A UFO Catcher style game.
Foreigners congregate in front of Baskin Robbins (called "31 ice cream" in Japan).
Kids trying to see themselves on the T.V.
Those same kids showing off for the camera.
Cheap crap for sale.
The mascot of Yamato courier service (like UPS) - a black cat.
Pikachu, Monsters, Inc. and Snoopy decorations.
More shaved ice sales.
The liquor shop hawks its wares in an animated way.
The liquor shop lady shows her enthusiasm and international flare.
The French man holds up a sign for the crepes he is making.
Another festival game. I'm not sure how it's played.
Indian food for sale - we tried the curry and nan set, samosa and the tandoori chicken. The curry sucked, but everything else was very good.
People hanging out in front of a closed shop and eat because there's no place to sit.
A used kimono shop.
A full house off to the side of the street in the tables and chairs set up for people who desperately need a rest from the festival crowd.
When the festival day is done, no one gets to have fun. This is the clean up situation.
Masks for kids are being sold on the right. I don't know what everyone is looking at.
People watching a performance of some sort.
A performer who looks like he's boring some of the crowd. Note the Pringles can behind the suitcases.
More jumbo franks. Apparently, you can never have enough hot dogs at a festival.
Kids at the local butcher shop. Tanabata is the "star festival" so they've got those star inflated things.
A woman applies make-up in defiance of Japan's unwritten rules about this being bad manners when done in public.
a man squirts sweetened condensed milk onto shaved ice with syrup
Tables set up near the end of the shopping street which opens up on a major street (the opposite end of where the station is).
The free fans being given out at the festival.
The festival souvenir pin - "Yes, we can." We don't know what we can do, but we can. :-p
I have no idea what the slop in the middle is. I think it's okonomiyaki, but it's hard to tell.
A woman looks at the fish in a plastic bag which will probably be dead before she gets them home.
Pizza with weird weiners on it and bread sticks.
The huge crowd on the last night of the festival.
Pasta paella sold in front of the liquor shop.
Yes, it's bacon on a stick. Yaki-bacon!
McDonald's also gave away fans, theirs had goldfish on them.
Okonomiyaki piled high with cabbage and topped with slices of bacon.
Sweet potato glazed with sugar and then sprinkled with coarse sugar for about $4 a cup.
A glamor shot of glazed sweet potato (daigaku imo).
A little boy eating multi-colored kakigori (shaved ice with syrup).
Given the crowds, no one could actually walk a dog on the street so this man carries his.
People shopping at the drug store despite the festival mob.
Sushi for about a dollar a roll and juice for the same price (sold in cans on the right).
This woman looked more miserable than the shot shows. The sign she is holding just says beer is about $4 a cup.
Always with the peace signs.
Beer, soda, and hash brown potatoes for sale.
Double dogged, and looking like she's in a nightgown.
A police van and a woman shouting at people. There's a politician parked near here on top of his sound truck. That's why the police are there.
The politician perched atop his sound truck. He's taking advantage of the captive festival audience.
Political volunteers giving out pamphlets.
The politician is wearing a sash which says something like "the real person." He does this to make it clear that he's the real guy and not a lackey.
Who knew that obi (belts on yukata and kimono) were so handy for tucking in your fans.
More political flyers.
The mob in front of the station - a mixture of the politician's supporters and festival attendees.
A McDonald's employee giving out fans.
McFlurry Mint with Oreos and yogurt ads.
Drinks have to be kept in huge blocks of ice because regular cubes would melt away in minutes.
The sign says "fresh beer" (draft beer), 250 yen (about $2.50). The guy in front of it looks like he's had enough.
Two girls who look oddly somber and focused... like they're trying to meditate in the middle of the chaos.
"Jumbo franks" being sold by a convenience store. The sign is... oddly suggestive.
Love those blonde Japanese girls.
"Pleeeeeeease, Mom, can't I go home now. This festival sucks."
A cotton candy machine.
All cotton candy that I've seen in Japan has been white. I've been told the Japanese don't like artificial colors, so no blue and pink clouds of sugary fun for them!
A run on the goldfish games.
A bin full of mystery boxes for sale. The sign says that some of the possible items in the boxes are: stopwatch, portable camera or radio, schedule book, jewelry, sunglasses, hair accessories, cell phone straps, and cartoon character trinkets.
An enterprising person sells umbrellas on a day when there was a downpour.
A rent-a-cop making sure no one breaks some festival traffic rule.
Elmo is too high up to be tickled.
She looks like she's wearing a baby's pink top hat.
Disaster information - on a day when Tokyo had a 6.9 earthquake. They were prescient.
The crowd became so tightly packed that food traffic ground to a halt at one point.
Yes, that's Obama hanging there.
A close up of the Obamanation.
This man at a Sony electronics store was moving the camera around to catch different people in the crowd.
The Sony guy in his Pikachu hat gets a picture perfect shot from the crowd.
Mmmm, candy apples.
Near as I can tell, this is octopus loaf on a stick, wrapped up in bacon.
Yeah, you want a guy with a glass full of beer hanging on to your baby.
The candy apple man can because he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good.
I get the strange feeling he's trying to entice that little girl with candy apples.
Someone tossed their cookies on the griddle. Seriously, I have no idea what this is supposed to be.
The local fresh food market doing what it does every day despite the festival. That woman must want those peppers pretty badly to brave the mob to buy them.
A young woman eating a rice ball, onigiri.
The huge platter is being prepped for a pasta dish.
The happy liquor shop people.
Real French crepes, made by a real French man.
Those crepes set fast.
Crepe preparation - bananas, chocolate and cream. There are little quiches in the center.
Love the little girl with the bottle stuck in her mouth. Moments before, she had it balanced upward so she could drink without her hands.
It looks like pasta, but I have no idea what it is.
