Small Obon Festival in Pensacola, FL

While visiting United States this past month, I got lucky to be there during one of the annual Japanese festivals. It was pretty small, but with a lot of heart lol. And I could safely say that I never had more fun at a Japanese festival in my life :)

It was raining that day, heavily, but it didn't stop us from going out and enjoying out day. Who cares that we got soaked in the process? And of course nothing beats having your friends there. I missed them a lot. It is a wonderful feeling to come back and know that you are MISSED with a capital letter. :)

Afterwords we went to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate Fran's B-Day :) She ordered her favorite meal again, the one where she has to cook it herself lol. I think every other time I went out to eat was to a Japanese restaurant. :)

London Japan Matsuri 2010

I was looking forward to this event since last September, and once again I was not disappointed. This year it was bigger and better, and like I said once before, the 30K people that came last year came again and brought friends. :)

This year Japan Matsuri occupied the whole Spitafields Market, which definitely helped with the breathing space. It got very crowded towards the end of the day, but we were leaving anyways so it didn't affect us that much. My favorite part was the kimono stalls, and a fairly decent prices. Still out of my price range, but being unemployed makes pretty much everything out of my price range right now lol. I still got myself a cute cellphone holder, as well as bought 2 other ones as a souvenirs for friends in Florida :) I will probably save them as either Christmas presents, or if I can't wait till Christmas, I'll send them out in the next care package.

We met up at the Liverpool Station, of course I didn't notice anyone and had Hong calling me from few yards away lol. :) She wore the most gorgeous green ro kimono that I wanted to steal (or at leas to borrow) from her :) :) :)



I wore my kokeshi dolls kimono again. I love that one! I think right now it is easily my favorite. :) I paired it up with ugly-by-itself-yellow-and-lavender-rose nagoya obi, which of course looked great :) Love that obi too! It is such an ugly shade of yellow when looking at it by itself, but paired up with kimono it turns gorgeous. It was pretty chilly that day, so I was hoping my layers of padding will keep me warm. Sure enough, I got hot in the crowd. But the moment we left all the crowds, I felt great again :)



We had fun looking for festival banners and taking pictures with each of them :) There were 4: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Sadly we didn't take any pictures with spring, because it was right next to a huuuuuuuge trashcan! Epic fail! Oh well, we did get the other three :)



















Overall, it was a great event and I can't wait till Japan Matsuri 2011. :)