Golden Week Part Two: Biking to the Kite Festival

After biking to Tenryu on Saturday, we set out on another biking adventure on Sunday. This time we headed south to go to the kite festival which is part of the Hamamatsu Matsuri.

We reached a dead end because part of a trail we were on was closed. So we pushed our bikes along a short dirt path to reach a road. 

I was surprised to see a cactus growing in the wild. I didn't know that they grew in Japan.

We reached the festival, parked our bikes, and walked through a slow-moving crowd to reach the main area. 

One of the first things I saw was this smoking area. "Always feel relaxed with tobacco" was amusing enough, but "lived together with tobacco" was even weirder.

I just realized that the man in the tent has a jacket that says "lived together with tobacco" on it. 

We looked around at the food booths a bit. They were honestly my main reason for going. I've seen the kites twice before and once you've seen them there's not much point in seeing them again.

I got a chocolate (I guess it was dyed white chocolate) covered banana just like last year. 

The kites often get stuck on the nearby power lines and trees. 

As we were leaving we got some cotton candy at the same booth as last year. Our day biking to the kite festival was very similar to last year! Except this time we got there before it was ending.

On our way back we stopped to eat our cotton candy. Jonathan didn't care what packaging he got so he let me pick both of them. I got Bon Bon Ribbon (the bunny) for myself and Jewel Pets for Jonathan. That's what he gets for not caring! :)

At least he had fun ripping the package apart.

That sign says that trash in the Tenryu River is bad. I guess if you litter in there the fish mutate and grow creepy arms and hands. 

We biked about 16 and a half miles that trip (almost 27 km). After resting for a little bit at Jonathan's apartment, we biked to Tenryugawa Station (only a couple of kilometers away) to take a train to downtown Hamamatsu.

We looked around the food stalls near Act Tower and also saw a monkey performing. He was on stilts when we first saw him.

We both got some yakisoba with egg and went to the upper level, where there were very few people, and had a nice view of the festivities below.

This picture makes my food look super unappetizing, but it was good.

We biked about fifty miles that weekend. I was pretty tired after all of that! It had been a lot of fun though! The weather had been beautiful and I'm glad we got to spend time outside. The next day was rainy and gross. Then Tuesday was nice weather again. Three nice days out of four isn't bad though. :)