So, you wouldn’t believe this BUT we ended up missing the train again. No worries though because we ended up finding ANOTHER festival – Akita Music Festival. It was around 9am so there weren’t too many people. Everyone tried cow tongue and matcha (green tea) flavored soft cream. I’m not sure what I was expecting but cow tongue tastes very salty and gamy. The mascots we took a picture with are from TV stations, I think. After the festival, we also found a huge garden filled with lotus flowers. Our friend Okkasan (Okaasan is mom in Japanese so you can imagine how much we enjoy yelling his name) told us that we could eat the seeds. They tasted like almonds – 美味しいかった ！
Finally made the train to go to Shimohama! It cost only ¥500 by train to get there. We practically had the beach to ourselves, besides the guys wearing the pink speedos. We swam, played soccer, wrestled, swam, swam, got stung by jellyfish, wrestled, swam, soccer, swam, got stung by jellyfish, swam…mid-afternoon we ended up finding the Orange House that served かき氷 (flavored shaved ice) and drinks. The Ojiisan working there let us sing karaoke so everyone sang Bohemian Rhapsody, Party in the USA, Sorry, Just The Way You Are, and several other hits. After spending 7 hours at the beach and seeing the sunset, we head back to Akita Station and ate some udon and tempura. Udon, thick wheat flour noodles, is usually served hot but we were all exhausted and hot from the sun so cold udon was the way to go. By the way, none of us brought sunscreen…almost a week has past and our skin is still peeling.
By the way, at the beach, Patrick and I wanted to swim out as far as we could, which was a horrible idea because I ended up getting hit by a banana boat. The bruise has gradually gotten worse throughout the week and most people say I look like I’m wearing eye shadow HAHA I’m proud of this bruise. I feel like that and my painful sore arms are an accomplishment for my swimming distance.
Friday night and no one planned anything! At the last second, the 10 of us decided to go to a karaoke place. Unfortunately, we had to wait at the station for 40 minutes till the next train to Akita so, naturally, we decided to take a group picture and this is what happened. When we finally arrived at Akita, we found out we couldn’t karaoke because people under 20 years old need to have a parent with them after 11pm. Since our plan was to stay out all night, we ended up hanging around the city. We listened to 80s music throughout the night, singing and dancing our sleep away – we basically sang karaoke. Four of our friends left earlier though and missed the beautiful sunrise. I’m not lying when I say we stared at the sunrise for about an hour. It was unbelievable – crows flying above us, roads filling with passing cars, people heading to work.
After the sunrise, we took the train from Akita to Wada. The bus back to school picks us up from Wada station, except we decided to walk back to school since the bus wasn’t coming for another two hours. All we passed were rice fields and trees – everything green.
urtravelogues.com 