Nagoya Pictures Explosion Bonanza

Yesterday, I went to Nagoya for the Samurai Festival, which was an excellent outing. I took undoubtedly far too many pictures, nearly all of which are posted here. Due to the combination of Blogger's poor picture uploading program and laziness, the order is largely random, and I won't comment each one. However, here is what to expect:

The first stop we made was at Nagoya Castle, which was very cool, and had leats of neato stuff on display, like a mini-museum. Notable items include bonzai trees, samurai outfits, swords, and big, big guns. The next stop was a shrine, where we saw some awesome traditional Japanese outfits, shinto prayers, ate delicious noodles for lunch, and most notably, saw a wedding. The wedding was very cool, and I now officially want to get married in a traditional Japanese male marriage outfit, because it rules. I took a small video of the ceremony, so you could hear the weird music that was played. When that is online, I will post a link to it. Finally, we saw the main event, a parade depicting each generation of Japanese culture, with an emphasis on the samurai. Be jealous about this, because it was quite a spectacle.

Another quick note: I made this trip with Tiago, Kai, and Verena. Occasionally, they will show up in the pictures. Tiago is a 22-year-old asian from Brazil, Kai is a 50-year-old (but looks 40 max) part asian part hawaiian, and Verena is a 19-year-old German.

Finally, the first two pictures are from a few nights ago, when a HUGELY HUGE bug was crawling up the main door of my apartment building.





















If I could wear this as my everday clothing, I TOTALLY would.






New Facebook profile picture














John Noyes, what are doing? Go play Final Fantasy VII

























































All in all, it was an excellent day, and when we returned to Okazaki, Kai and I went out for Sushi, where I tried a wide variety of dishes and spent about twice as much money as I intended. It was excellent, and I will definitely be returning to that restaraunt.