Sagami Giant Kite Festival

What better way to spend Cinco de Mayo than at a Giant Kite festival eating Japanese street vendor food? Yeah I couldn't think of a better way either!

I think this was one of our first pretty big adventures on our own. Brad figured out about where we needed to be and we rode the train having full faith that we'd find this festival once we got off. There weren't tons of people wandering around this train station, but there were just enough to make us believe we should follow them, that they were probably going to this kite festival.So we started walking down residential streets and soon we were surrounded by fields. But there were still people walking along these streets with us, so we felt we must be headed in the right direction.

We finally made it after a good 20 minutes or so walk. It was still relatively early, not a ton of people there for the festival yet. There was a performance happening with drummers and dancers and a flute player, very cool to watch. See a clip below:

All the performers were fun to watch, but I particularly enjoyed the children, especially the expressions they made.

After the performance we got to see our Japanese Ambassador, Caroline Kennedy.

The Kite festival is an all day event. There is a lot of waiting around, waiting for the wind to be just right, waiting for people to get off the field, waiting for the judges to be ready, etc etc. At one point it started to rain. So we sat under our umbrella and waited.

There was even an Army band  from Camp Zama there to entertain as well as countless booths selling toys, trinkets and food.

 Eventually came time to do the smaller kites. Usually a youth group like boy scouts were the runners for the smaller kites.

The large kite in one of the other fields was flown,

then they tried the one at our field a few times, it got airborne a little then...

CRASH!

It was a fun day, fun to be a part of a cool festival and see some traditional activities. I kind of related it to going to a NASCAR race. You sit around for a while bored out of your mind then something exciting happens...like a crash. Morbid me...

But seriously, it's not nearly as boring as NASCAR, I recommend anyone to go at least once. It really is a marvel to see how extremely large these kites are and the effort required to get them up in the air.