A Banner Day!

And I don't mean Bruce.

Today is Children's Day in Japan and it is traditional to fly giant Carp banners to celebrate. I didn't venture out today to see any Carp flying, though I did go to Nasu last Monday. We were en route to the nearby zoo and came across some large Koi waving in the wind.

Impressive but not that impressive.

A few klicks later and we discovered a field full of carp that WAS impressive and decided to pull over. They were asking 500 just to park and look at the banners. That's 500 per person! We relented (it has goats!) and wandered around the joint. First up...the goats!

We share the same beard!

There's a little castle alongside but that isn't the main attraction at 那須ハートフルファーム Nasu Heartful Farm.

This area is normally home to 2 million Sunflowers, the Parking attendant apologized that they weren't in bloom (still didn't give a discount though.)



This was as near as we could get to the sunflowers.

What was there were several hundred Carp Banners and other banners depicting Japanese Folk Tales flapping in the breeze. First up some Koi!

Here's a few seconds of some flapping fish.



Now a ton of Mythological Banners.

 

 

 

 

 

A few more seconds of flapping banners:



A day would not be complete without a picture of yours truly.

I even got to hook up with at Mike-Cat (Calico cats are 三毛猫 or Mike-Neko.)

And I got to second base with a cow!

Not a bad little field after all. Is it worth 500 ¥ per head? Maybe once.
Happy Kid's Day everyone!

Aaooooh!

Just a quick post of a bunch of pictures drawn by my grades 3 and 4 yesterday. We use a skeleton and learn colours and body parts, and then during the costume parade (the kids wear the monster mask of their choice), they're invited to draw a "picture of Halloween". This is what they came up with...

First, the best of the Grade 3s. They didn't have much time (not much you can do with a class of 40!) so many of them didn't finish.

The Grade 4s start with this disco Frankie!

And end with this wacky werewolf!

More goodies later today.

REVISED: I didn't have much time this morning so there was no chance to add a Kemono Friend.

Since there are a few ghosts in the above pictures, here is 人面魚 Jinmengyo. She has two fins on the sides of her head and a fish tail on her back. As part of the original Jinmengyo myth, she wears a mask on her head that takes the form of a fish face.

The original Jinmengyo myth involves Koi Goldfish that have a human face. Such as this guy,

or this one.

This has a write-up in Japanese as to the history of Fish-Faced Fish.

That is pretty ugly!