And I’m back! After a (big) technical snafu I can now access my blog again. (Thanks Sebastien!) So I’m long overdue for my post about Oiden - this is a yearly summer festival that is held in Toyota on the last weekend of July. On Friday and Saturday they do a huge dance production and Sunday there are fireworks and most everyone dresses in yukata (cotton summer kimono). The dancing part is not at all what you’d expect. People organize into teams and choreograph aerobics-like dances to the same music (which is blared all over Toyota City) and wear the same costumes. They dance in the middle of the streets and move very slowly in a great big loop around the city. The dancing continues for around 3 hours and apparently there are judges because some of the teams get awarded cash prizes at the end of it all. The costumes are also surprising. I guess this is the time of year for people to shed their conservative button downed image. It looked like Miami on Halloween! Everywhere you looked there were half naked people - anything you could think of, they were there. So here are some photos of the first two days of Oiden:

Ah, so many memories. Goofy people and wide eyed foreigners… So then there were fireworks the following day! And most everyone from Nova went to see them. I took a TON of pictures but edited them down to what you see here.

In quite a few of the pictures you can see the bridge that goes to Toyota stadium (especially in the second to last picture). The show lasted abour an hour and a half. Pretty cool!!!ÂÂ