Our First Festival; Tanabata Matsuri

Episode № 117 takes you to the 73rd Tanabata Matsuri (Star Festival) in Fussa-shi, Tokyo-to. If you like the drumming, make sure to listen to the last 40 seconds too!

Transcript

→ Episode № 117 Our First Festival; Tanabata Matsuri

Welcome back!
Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio companion to LadyJupiter.com; a lifestyle blog that I won’t be updating for a while.

In this episode I will share an update on our life as affected by the U.S. military, then continue with a blog-related status check, and wrap up with something domestic.

Today in our military-affected lives I have nothing significant to update.

Since last episode we’ve remained busy, which shouldn’t be a surprise to you.

Although we’ve briefly run into Joyful Honda for emergency Gorilla Glue, I wasn’t aware of the full array of products available. Obviously this is important to my resource management, so Mister Jupiter scheduled us a Saturday morning adventure in our nearest Joyful, which is one of six Ultra-Large stores in Japan. It’s like…Walmart, IKEA, Petsmart, Hobby Lobby and Home Depot including lumber and garden…rolled into one building. With a food court. Two grocery stores, and ~if you can believe it~ free parking.

I generally don’t eat fried food, and I generally don’t eat before noon, but I am very willing to make exceptions for a good lookin’ chicken nugget. There’s a KFC in the food court, and easy ordering via kiosk with an English language button. I ordered Kid Jupiter a kid’s chicken nugget set (otherwise known as a combo meal) and was very happy that I could choose coffee as the drink. Minutes later our order was ready and we sat down with a picture-perfect tiny meal of nuggets, french fries, and black coffee. Nuggets and coffee for me, french fries for the boy.

We had a great morning walking around Joyful Honda, I grabbed some hand tools (including metric measuring tape, which has been the most useful purchase to date). Then we went back home to tend to Mike Dog, and get ready to walk to the train station.

We could have hopped on a train at the train station, but we stuck around for the Star Festival instead. It’s traditionally on the seventh day of the seventh month, but modern days make modern changes. We enjoyed Fussa’s 73rd Tanabata Festival, which was two days, and according to fussa-tanabata.com we three Jupiters were part of the 530,000 people in attendance. Half a million is a lot of people. You should have seen the lines for the food vendors!

Luckily a nearby beverage vendor got Mister Jupiter’s attention. He got us some walkin’ beers - and it was my favorite import from half of my ancient lineage…Corona. Served with a lemon wedge instead of a lime because…JAPAN! I mean that in the kindest way of course. Declaring “JAPAN!” has become the household statement when confronted with Japan’s unrelenting charm. The other day I was driving home, the air was so clear that I could see Mt. Fuji, so I slowed down and focused my attention to look out for tanuki…you know, the raccoon dogs that are endemic to JAPAN!

Anyhoo, I grabbed you some sounds while we were out! ** MATSURI DRUMMING **

The next day we walked a few meters to our neighbors’ house and had a homemade pizza party. It was mine and Mister Jupiter’s first time cooking on an OONI pizza oven, but it’s set the bar for us because it did it’s job - it got real hot real fast, and cooked our pizzas as intended. Our host and hostess made sure that everyone who wanted to make a pizza got to add toppings and bake to their hearts’ content. I was very happy to sit and graze on the delicious variety of pizzas coming out of the oven.

A few days later I resumed my on-base resource management tour and visited the U-Fix-It Store. Such locations used to be called Self-Help, but those words have changed meaning over the past twenty years, so now, if you live on base, you go to the U-Fix-It Store for a small range of household basics. I borrowed a bottle of mildew remover, and when I turned it back in, I grabbed a new set of drip pans for our electric stove.

Later, we (surprise!) took a visiting friend out to Genki Sushi for dinner. He was in town to observe Mobility Guardian, and the details are otherwise irrelevant. What does matter is that his travel companion declined to join us because they didn’t like sushi. Well, I inadvertently ordered mostly non-sushi for my own meal. Again, starting with my beloved chawanmushi and sardine nigiri. This time I also ordered a bowl of udon, and almond jelly for dessert. As usual, it was quick, tasty, and affordable. Eating in other countries is going to be really hard later, I just feel it in my bones.

Not only did we enjoy sharing a meal with a friend, but it was also the last meal before our household goods arrival. So Kid Jupiter and I have only had thirteen sleeps in Tokyo before our stuff is scheduled to arrive. This was definitely what we intended when we opted to pack everything up in the beginning of May, when we were due to leave in the middle of June. And here we are, due to receive seven crates just before the middle of July.

As Kid Jupiter says “Life is Good” (also, we highly recommend buying an LG TV if you have also have a precocious reader in your home)!

I’ll have more next time! Now we’re scrambling to clean up our little house to be ready for two sets of movers. One set to remove our temporary furniture early in the morning, and the second set to deliver and unpack our crates on the same day. This means we need to put away as much stuff as possible to make room. It’s kind of surprising how easily we can spread out in just two busy weeks.

For today’s LadyJupiter.com update…the site is up, but hasn’t been updated since June. I’ll get back to it when our house feels more like home.

And lastly something domestic.

I’ve been brainstorming on how to make our front porch and back patio comfortable little spaces. Mister Jupiter got us into a garden unit that already had awnings over said porch and patio, so that is a huge time-saver because we wanted both awnings and now we don’t need to find a builder to install them. We do need a fence in the backyard, so we’ll still need to find and employ someone for that.

I don’t think we’ll really use the back patio too much though. Right now it’s an unpleasant space. We do have some tall trees, so the shade is nice, but it’s mosquito city out there. Also, our exterior wall is about 13 meters away from a highway, specifically 45 feet. That highway is Route 16, a beltway around Tokyo. The section nearest us is four lanes, so we have constant road noise on that side of the house, but thankfully very little honking.

According to dimensionofstuff.com other things that are also 45 feet long include seven female cougars, or five grand pianos. Also the Hollywood sign is only 45 feet tall, so imagine any of those letters laying on the ground - one edge will touch our house, the other will touch Route 16. So the combination of one motorway, and a million mosquitos…well, I’m happy to only use the back yard for our dog. He doesn’t like it out there either; he does his business and comes back indoors right away.

The front porch has much more potential, but I don’t have any vision for that space. And without knowing what I want, I don’t know what I need to buy. I wanted to make a few previous porches nice spaces, but we just never could. Mister Jupiter attracts mosquitos like a magnet (and Kid Jupiter too we’ve learned) so the fauna make things uncomfortable for them. I’m super allergic to grass, trees, weeds, and their pollens…so the flora make things uncomfortable for me. I’ll figure things out soon…we just need to get our crates delivered so we can deal with the interior before focusing on the exterior.

And that’s it for today.

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I will talk to you when I can record next → Bye for now!