Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Santera Mairi

We hit up the morning market again today but even more things in town were closed.  We did get a delicious hot chocolate drink though with strawberry bits and chocolate mochi in it.  Genuinely one of the best hot chocolates we've had.

We had a late lunchbat a ramen place that was just ok although the pork belly in it was very good.

After that we headed to the bus station and waited about an hour to head to a town north of here called Furukawa.  They have a festival every Jan 15 called Santera Mairi which is basically 3 Temple Pilgrimage.  It was started about 300 years ago for you folks to meet up, but now is now more praying for fortune in new relationships and thanking for old ones.  But girls do dress up in nice kimonos and have red parasoles and lanterns are lit and sent down the canal.  Additionally large snow sculptures around town shaped like candles are lit.  There's also lots of food stands.

It snowed pretty hard for a while and it was a chilly day.  The town is very cute in that historic section and has canals on the sides of roads that in the summer have carp in them (which they move in the winter).  We knew that's tuff was being lit but didn't know quite the logistics of it.  I think it really came down to we didn't stay late enough as the lanterns in the water probably happens later.  

There was this dude with a camera who asked us where we were from in english, but didn't know anything else.  And asked me something I though mightve been "why are you here" in Japanese.  And I replied we wanted to see Santera Mairi, and he's like "Follow me!"  And proceeded to sort of kidnap us as we backtracked to where we were before and somehow got some girl from Hong Kong involved.  A while later after he brought us to a temple where presumably it was starting, we thanked him amd then bailed.  Nice guy but it was awkward and he got us to take a photo with the Hong Kong girl who spoke perfect english btw.  Warned here we weren't sure what he was doing.

But everyone was super nice and wanted to talk at the stands.  I think its very unusual to get foreign visitors for this festival, and we saw very very few other westerners/nonasians there.  Lots of asking where we were from and how long we were in Japan.

I tried hot amazake which I had to look up later is a fermented rice drink that can sometimes be alcoholic.  It tasted kind of porridge like with a back taste of alcohol.  Wasn't crazy about it.

Ate more beef skewers and a croquette.  We also got pudding in a mayo shaped container that was more drinklike and happily not mayo flavored.

We also had Gohei Mochi which is a specialty of the region apparently.  Its mochi on a skewer that had a sweet and sour type coating instead of normal mochi/dango sweetness.  It had sort of a grey tar look to it before it was grilled.  Nutty tasting and slightly tangy.

We left a while after and although we missed more of the spectacle I'm glad we did.  Soooo tired right now.  Cooked, baths again, more cleaning of clothes.  I'll leave it at that for the night!

























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