Tanabata

Today was the big annual Tanabata festival in Sendai and a bunch of us went in to enjoy the atmosphere. Along with Dan and me were Christopher and Joshua Bengtson, the Sorensen clan and Tim Piccharini from Minneapolis, the son of Jan DeVries, a friend in Fergus Falls.

In the outdoor shopping Arcade that runs about 5 city blocks there are hundreds of hanging streamers that organizations, stores or clubs enter into a contest.

This particular row of streamers signified the 62nd anniversay of the Hiroshima and Nagaski bombing. You can read the tag that hung from each streamer below in the next picture. It felt quite humbling to be in Japan on the very day of the bombings 62 years later.

Me and some cute Japanese girls also in yukata (the cotton summer kimono).
While we were walking through the Arcade Maria found a yukata that she loved and was able to get it and have it put on at a kimono shop, so for the rest of the day, she and I walked around

The evening ended with a parade that we really enjoyed.