We stopped by a local fish market and bought some sudachi treats.
We bought some sudachi juice to bring home. I can't wait to cook with it!
Once again, our friends entertained the boys so they wouldn't get bored. Did I mention I love these guys??
We then experienced Tokushima ramen for lunch. You come in the restaurant and buy your lunch at the vending machines. You then bring your little receipt to the table and they bring you your food. It seems pretty efficient.
This was incredible ramen. Best I've ever had.
Jon was pretty happy with it as well.
The kids loved it.
Even the ice cream for dessert was excellent.
Here is the outside of the restaurant. The Japanese use characters a lot in their signs.
They then quickly brought us to their office building where they had a team prepared to dress us for the big dance festival. We arrived a little bit late and they probably were stressed, but they went right to business. They had a women's dressing room and a men's where the team got us ready.
The first step was to place a little gauze separator between our toes which they taped still. This helps when you wear those sandals.
They then put nylons and then these little socks on to wear with your sandals.
They had a hair station set up to fix our hair correctly and then they helped us put the traditional costume on.
We felt pretty authentic!
Trying to walk in the geta sandals.
They really cinch those wraps around your stomach!
When we were finished, we met the boys in the office. They looked so cute in their little outfits!
We were then ready to go! We were so excited!
We then headed off to a larger office building where we joined the rest of our large group and practiced the dance. They assigned experts to help teach us and dance with us.
Once we got to the festival area, they placed the hats on the women. They took a million pictures, but we had to leave our cameras at the office as we could not carry them around. Here are a few little pictures Lauren took on her phone.
We joined a couple hundred other people from the company in our dance. We waited with anticipation for our turn to take the stage. There are literally over a million people who come to watch the 100,000 dancers in the festival. There are four main dance areas with large grandstands of spectators. The rest of the spectators just sit on the streets and watch. It takes 10 minutes to dance across the grandstand stages. They told us we only had to do one of the 10 minute segments and then we could just sit and watch the rest (unless we wanted to dance more). It is pretty tiring to hold your hands above your head that long!
We did our dance and it was exhilarating! The sounds of the loud, traditional music; the smells of all the food vendors around the area and the lights of lanterns everywhere were overwhelming. It was amazing. Our only instructions were to smile the whole time and enjoy ourselves. What an incredible experience to join them in this festival. We were the only people there out of the thousands of dancers who were not Japanese. It was an honor.
After the first dance area they took us to dinner to relax and cool down. We laughed and enjoyed being with them. Ali had so much fun dancing, that she wanted to do another segment. Lauren and Andrew decided they would rather watch. Jon, Ali and Matthew joined the group for the next dance while the rest of us sat in the grandstand to watch. It was really cool to see them dance.
Andrew and his new best friend.
Relaxing at dinner.
After a while it was time to go back to the hotel. (The actual festival goes until Midnight.) We went back to the office to change out of our costumes and say goodbye. Boy was I sad to say goodbye to these guys. We had spent 3 amazing days with them and they were awesome. I wish we could take them home!
Our whole time here in Tokushima was so surreal. We were so grateful to have this experience and to meet such wonderful people.
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