Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata Festival

My friend and I visited a Tanabata Festival at Kanagawa prefecture to experience how Japanese celebrate this festival on 7th July (Sun). Chinese don't really celebrate this even though it originated from a Chinese myth, so I was curious how Japanese adapted this festival into their own. This place was quite far, a 100min ride from Shinjuku area.

It was around 3.30pm and the sun was still shining brightly =_=. It was extremely HOT!!! So we decided to make a round about to avoid the sun.

...and alas! We saw lots of food!

First kill, half a squid without tentacles...300yen. Not bad.

While eating, we saw this "mochi mochi"(chewy) fries and looked rather tempting... *Don't ask me why it's the French flag*

+Chilli & cheese for 700yen. YUMMY!

Saw this crab meat stall that seemed pretty good, but we were skeptical on how much actual crab meat they used.

My friend likes Japanese corn because it is very sweet. Happiness with charcoal grilled corn, 400yen :P

He spotted this weird parfait made from taiyaki (cake in a shape of a fish).  I wasn't sure if it'll be good, no buy.

WOW, the amount of eggs and cabbage!!!

They were selling cold cucumbers or pickled cold cucumbers everywhere for 200yen each!

Ramen burger! But no queue at all = not very tasty?

My friend was very interested in the crushed ice with milk cream + actual strawberry bits! It was really good! Something like ice kachang back home but more "luxurious".

So we chilled out enough and went back to the main street...

In the Japanese Tanabata Festival, you write your wish and hang them on a bamboo branch. Some shops would usually lay out on a table on the streets and let you write and hang for free, but because this is a major festival, the organisers were selling these at 100yen each. Imagine if they sold 5000 pcs, the revenue would be approx. USD5000!

Writing my wish while sipping my lemonade XD

My camera was too awesome... =_=

The light up reminds me of the Chinese mid-autumn festival, when we light up huge lanterns.

Young girls were wearing short yukata. Somehow we gaijin (foreigners) prefer the traditional long ones  because they look more elegant instead of boyish.

This girl is incredible... she still continued to scoop the fishes even when her net was torn. She will be a great housewife or CEO in the future!

We checked out the kind of games they have and games like this is rather international. These kids tried to shoot down the blocks from the rack for more than 10 times and still couldn't make it. We concluded that it must be a joint effort of at least two guns aimed at the same block and shot concurrently to increase the kinetic force for the block to fall down :P

Attractive toys as prizes, except I'm not sure if these were authentic licensed copies...
Even the earrings on the lady was a bit dubious... But this is Japan, should be...legit?

Japanese loves dogs... very much!!!

Even the policemen guarding the trash is so cool~ (I think he was making sure everyone sort the trash properly)

And there were people with signs to control traffic flow. Otsukare-sama!

That's all from me! For more reading about Tanabata Festival, check out Zooming Japan, another wonderful gaijin blog about Japan :P