Kishiwada

At my last school, I went on a field trip up to Kishiwada in Osaka. It is about a 30 min train ride. We visited a museum dedicated to the Danjiri Festival. It is known for being quite dangerous due to the hundreds of participants pulling large wooden carriage-like things called danjiri (I’m standing on a small one in the picture) through tiny streets lined with spectators. Each danjiri also has a man who rides on top who jumps and dances around. At the museum I saw short videos of the festival, “retired” danjiri’s, and wore a happi coat. I helped the teachers who were checking off groups of children who came in by sitting and stating out of the way. After a very delicious “Viking” lunch (long ago there was a buffet chain called Viking, and now all buffets are referred to as Viking), we went to the Natural History Museum where students were able to learn some things about nature and pet some dead animals. I snapped a few pictures of the castle. As you can see, a few leaves are starting to change color, but it has been so warm, they are taking their time changing! Oh, and I highly recommend a children’s book called Freddy the Leaf. It is in the 8th grade English textbook here, but I had never read it before. It uses the seasons to talk about life and death. I found it a very touching story.