littleforeigner.com life in hiroshima and beyond

Children’s Kagura at Sumiyoshi Shrine summer festival (video)

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Another blue as blue sky can be afternoon at the Family Pool.

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Read more about Hiroshima’s Family Pool here on GetHiroshima.com.

Roy Orbison lives… In Ushita

This “non-traditional” performance at our neighborhood summer festival is actually just the kind of thing you come to expect to see at Japanese festivals. I should say, however, that it was followed by a local Japanese taiko drum group with a tiny little old lady dressed us as Ebisu.

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We are not the only ones who are ready for summer…

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After a bit of a brutal rainy season, the first cicada (I’ve seen) of the summer.

A lot of rain in Hiroshima over the past few days…

I wrote a short post on the deluge of 2010 here on the GetHiroshima Blog.

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Obake jinbei

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Summer in Japan is the season for ghost stories, jinbei and seeking out high powered air conditioning in shopping malls.

First bike wreck

Felix got a juicy bit of road rash on his first “proper” bike crash on the way into town today. He handled it very well, shuffling to the nearest taxi rank with blood dripping down his arms and legs. Brought back lots of (painful) childhood memories. He, at least, was wearing a helmet (unlike his father).

Double take at Chugoku Shinbun’s World Cup special edition

Now that’s what I call banana bread

On the way back from the Unity Dub beach party last weekend we stopped at a highway rest stop (can’t remember which one – it was between Himeji and Hiroshima somewhere) that seemed to offer all kinds of “special products”. One of which was this hyper-realistic banana shaped banana bread. They also had realistic looking apple bread – unfortunately the last one was snapped up before I had a chance to snap it with my phone and soy sauce ice cream (yum!)

Unity Dub

For what I thought would be the start of summer, I joined the Hug A Speaker and Aux Dining crew in representing Hiroshima at the Unity Dub free beach party near Himeji in Hyogo Prefecture.

On a sliver of beach sandwiched between two big factories, there were 2 main stages featuring Kansai DJs as well as our makeshift beach stage manned by the regular DJs from MUGEN’s monthly Hug A Speaker night. It was pretty chilly and would have been pretty hard without the nice beach campfire, but I could imagine that this could be a great place for a party when the weather finally warms up.

There are a few more photos from the party on my Flickr.