Obon・お盆 Week Round-up
By Oli
At 2:52 PM · Thursday, 21 August · 2003
To Diary
No diary posts recently - bad me. I had a lot of fun in Obon・お盆 week - all but one of my classes had a break, and I don’t have any web work on now, so I had a week’s vacation! The week started with Miwa’s sister Miki and her husband Shige visiting on Sunday 10th August. They left Saitama・埼玉県 about 5am, driving right through a huge typhoon. The typhoon was strong enough to knock out our power for about 4 hours during the night, so we were quite worried. They got here fine and saw our apartment for the first time - it was great to see them (last time was the March wedding).
On Saturday night the weather had cleared up enough for us to BBQ on the verandah, and Miwa’s family also visited; Kazuyo, Takeru, Ken and even o-jī-san・おじいさん. On Sunday Miki & Shige went to Ōdai 大台町 and Shizuka & Toshi visited us with two of their friends. We had a great day swimming at Kounohama・国府の浜 (which I just discovered is officially KouShirahama・国府白浜), followed by a BBQ on our ‘private beach’, with a bonfire as the sun set. On Tuesday Miwa & I managed our third BBQ in four days (!) when K-chan and Shige-chan visited us (the other Reflexology girls). I was attacked by a killer spark while getting the BBQ going, which narrowly missed my eye. Luckily the damage was more to my manly pride than anything, haha.
On Wednesday I saw Matt for the last time before he left for Pakistan, and we went to Ōmiya・大宮町 to Malc’s swimming hole with four of the new Matsusaka・松阪市 JETs. Although the weather was pretty non-summery, we still had a great time jumping off rocks, and I managed to finally pull my first front flip (after I paid the entry fee with an agonising landing first). I hope Matt is ok in Pakistan.
On Friday we visited Miwa’s relatives and paid our respects at her family grave. I also visited Michiko, and caught up with Naomi too. While that was good, all our Obon・お盆 festival plans got ruined by the cold rainy weather (very unusual for a Japanese summer) - the Mikoshi・神輿 carrying on Friday was cancelled, and we bailed on going to Kyoto・京都市 to see the Daimonji-yaki・大文字焼き on the Saturday. All a bit sad really. We went to a local island for an onsen・温泉 on Saturday instead, which was quite fun.
The miserable weather for the last two weeks looks like it’s finally stopped - the temperature has just hit 30°. I hope there’s a few more days of snorkeling to go yet!
