Travis turns 28 and Nagoya has a festival

Travis had a birthday last month, and it was well worth noting. But, since I went on a do-absolutely-nothing hiatus, I have decided to hit rewind and share the details of it with you. When I say do nothing, I really mean that. I abandoned all responsibilities (although I now have very few) for three whole weeks. It was glorious.

Anyhoo...Travis had a really fun birthday. I organized a little dinner party at a local sports bar here and invited some of our friends. It was a lot of fun, and Travis was so touched by how many of them came to the party and by all of the thoughtful gifts he received. 

Here is a shot of the group.  After we finished eating, we all headed up to a friend's apartment for some cake. We don't have an oven here, but our friend, Megan, was generous enough to loan me hers so I could bake Travis a cake. Another friend, Beth, gave me some cake mix and icing. After two rounds of cooking (the ovens here are really small) and only one minor burn, a delicious German chocolate cake was created. I guess sometimes it does take a village.

The following day, which was Travis' actual birthday, Nagoya hosted her annual fall festival. It was pretty cool, too. We actually began the day by meeting some friends at the train station with big plans of traveling to a neighboring city. Once we realized the train tickets were going to be twice as much as we had anticipated, we opted to stay in Nagoya. Below are some pictures of the festival.

Isn't he cute?

Isn't she cute? The geisha, not me, Silly.

It was really neat to see all of the traditional dress.

Can you believe these shoes?

And this bike?

And these dancers? 

Then we went to the parade, which was also quite interesting. It was fun to watch, but I have never been to a parade with such long pauses between the sections. It went on forever. The cleanup afterwards was quite impressive, though. Directly after the parade, an army of street sweepers and trash trucks drove through and disposed of everything in sight. It was incredible. Within five minutes, the whole downtown area was spotless.

These peeps posed for us during the parade. Cool, huh?

After that, Travis and I went to a yaki niku restaurant (Korean BBQ) to wrap up the birthday celebration. Then, I abandoned him the following morning for three weeks. How's that for a birthday present?!