More Matsuri To Come

My "boyfriend" lookin' sexy hitting the Taiko drums on the left. hahaha :3

The lanterns with Aki's pride....eggplant.

One of the other dancing teams.

Sunday morning started off with a lovely girly shopping trip to Kochi city's AEON shopping center with Bee and Steph Seeing that we were all desperately in need of some work clothing, we all started off in Uniqlo, which ended up being about half of our trip. Just like me, the other two are obsessed with clothing and honestly... we probably shouldn't shop together because we are all too enabling for eachother's weaknesses. Hahahahaa. After too much shopping, we stopped for some bubble tea (mediocre...) and a quick stop at the foreign foods store, where I was able to pick up some actual CHEAP pasta, some tomato sauce, cheese, and sausage!

Unfortunately, after a quick lunch of too greasy food and a little more shopping on my part, we had to rush back to Aki so that I could dance in the big festival for the night.... which was AMAZING. Saturday's dancing had only produced about 5 different groups, including our own. However, tonight's festival consisted of at least 10/15 groups from all over, as well as tons of delicious matsuri food and silly games. I gave into temptation and bought a doraemon cup to fill with juice and had some delicious yakisoba. After my group performed, the three of us walked around looking at food and toys and eating our dinners on the beach as the sunset. It was honestly an un-real moment.

After dinner, we were joined by our co-worker Nat-chan and her boy-friend and two friends. They paid ridiculous amounts of money letting us play the silly matsuri games and feeding us hotdogs, french fries, and sake. Once it got dark, all of us walked to the beach where they had set-up a picnic blanket, and sat around eating and talking as the fireworks went off in the background. That was seriously the funniest conversation I've had in a long time. Broken english combined with tosa-ben is near impossible to understand, so all of us had a good laugh every time there was a silly miscommunication (ex: hard boy). Shu-chan was hell bent on using only english, and tomoyo was sooo super genki and spunky... it was adorable every time she got excited, she'd squeak and make cute noises. Nat-chan and Ryoku-chan were way calmer and cool, but we all had a good time making them pretend to be drugstore workers helping american customers who didn't understand Japanese find things in a "store." Apparently we're all going to make dinner together some time soon at Ryoku-chan's place. 楽しみ！

The fat blue cat was allllll mine. :D

Kakigori!!!! Which didn't have the milk topping so I didn't bother.

The gorgeous sunset over the beach near the festival and only 10 min walk from my house.