Matsuri!

Saturday was Tenjin Matsuri! It was definitely the loudest and craziest I've ever seen Matsue.
My host mom helped me put on my Yukata. I think I could sort of do it on my own now, but I will never be able to tie an obi. The obi is the part that goes around your waist. It's a very stiff and thick piece of cloth, but somehow my host mom worked it into this amazing bow! How she did it I will never know. Magic maybe?
After that, I met my friend Hiroko (who gave me the yukata) at SATY to take purikura. I thought this might be a little strange...Walking around the mall in a yukata? But actually lots of people were there in their yukatas, so it was fine. We took purikura, and were off to the festival!
I was surprised to find that the main attraction at the festival was a bunch of adorable Japanese kids ghetto dancing...But they were really good! And also, you throw some money in a box thing at the shrine and pray.
Mostly, there are lots of little games that you play. There are lots where you try to catch things like fish (live ones) or bouncy balls with little paper nets. I didn't try, but it looked pretty hard because obviously the net breaks when you put it in the water! There was also this thing where you cut out a pattern along these lines, and if you can do it perfectly, you get money. But it's very difficult. Mostly, I just walked around and ate stuff :) There were lots of things to buy, but my luggage is morbidly obese already, so I decided it'd be better if I didn't...
I don't know what it's actually called but I also got to saw the first part of the parade type thing. Little kids were carrying these big float things and cheering, and it was really adorable! I don't really know what everything is called so it's hard to describe, but I think the videos will give you a better understanding. One of the floats stopping in front of me and this little kid started screaming "GAIKOKUJIN!!!GAIKOKUJIN!!!" (Foreigner). Actually, many more people were pointing out the fact that I was a foreigner than usual...when I walked by people, I'd here whispers of "foreigner!foreigner!" That was amusing :)
After the festival, I was supposed to walk home. I thought that my friend was sort of walking the same way (because my host mom asked her before and she said yes), so I was fine with that. My host my said my host siblings were also walking home, but they left before me. Except it turned out my friend was actually going to walk back to the mall to get picked up, which was the exact opposite of the way I needed to go. So I thought, "ok, I'll just call my mom to come pick me up."
Except I didn't have her number with me.
And I had no clue where I was...
So I walked around for a bit trying to find some landmark I could identify. Eventually, I stumbled across the park I'd taken a walk to the other day! Good thing I took that walk, otherwise I seriously would not have know where I was. So I sort of knew the way from there, and after about 30-40 minutes managed to make my way home. What a site that must have been. Lost foreigner in a yukata stumbling around in the dark in Matsue...And my house was very far away from the festival, I'm not sure how my 10 year old host brother made it home like this.
Also on the way home, a man stopped me to ask for directions to the festival. I was like "Me? You're asking ME?" But luckily, I had just come from there, so I could tell him. When I apoligized for being bad at Japanese he was really surprised. I think since it was very dark he thought I was Japanese...
But yeah, other than that scary walk, the matsuri was very fun!