Sunday, November 16, 2008

Bamboo Festival in Taketa


Yesterday there was an amazing festival taking place in Taketa, just an hour and a half away from Oita city.

We went there early enough to participate in lighting some of the bamboo lights. That was pretty awesome to be able to light up the candles. The sun was still out so we decided to walk around town a bit and check out Oka castle ruins.

While walking towards Oka castle ruins it started to rain so the lady selling tickets lent us free umbrellas! her generosity took me by complete surprise. Little things like that just makes me love Japan more and more.

The view from Oka castle ruins is fantastic, you can see the mountains all around you. A lot of skeeters there though, I got chewed up!

It was starting to get dark so we went back to town hoping all the lights would finally be lit. Unfortunately the rain picked up.

It wasn't raining that hard, but just enough to put out most if not all of the candles.
We were feeling a bit down about the rain and ready to head back to the train station when we decided to dry off, warm up, and get some hot ramen and tea at the local restaurant.

The steaming bowl of ramen made everything feel much better. I love eating hot noodles and soups on cold rainy nights.

It definitely made me feel better about the rain situation. Upon leaving the ramen shop we realized there were people still determined to relight the candles inside the bamboo in spite of the pouring rain. They laid the bamboo down so the rain wouldn't get inside. It was cool seeing everyone trying so hard to keep the festival going.

The atmosphere of everything was pretty indescribable. It felt like looking into a sea of stars. The whole night made me reflect and remember that even though things might not go as planned, if you focus on the negatives too much you can easily miss out on up side of things Who's to say that just because its raining that the festival has to end? I believe the rain added more to the whole awesomeness of being there and definitely made the ramen taste 10x better.



4 comments:

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Takefumi said...

I hope you don't mind me asking a random question... but... how much does it cost for internet at Oita?

Diana said...

oh no problem, at my international dorm it's 1000JPY ($10) per month

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