Kikusui-sai Autumn Festival

Many people wearing traditional samurai clothes marched with horses in the central Utsunomiya city. The parade was very beautiful and they held Yabusame practices.

Yabusame is a traditional Japanese mounted archery; an archer on a running horse shoots wooden targets.

Yabusame practices had been held in front of Futarasan shrine, banba-hiroba space before, but this year, it was held in castle park.

Flood Destroys Riverside Houses

Heavy storm destroyed riverside　neighborhood.

On the next day after the typhoon hit, people were very busy to clean up their houses, belongings and the town itself.

Several streets were closed for getting rid of mud and garbage which were brought in by the flood from the Tagawa river.

Ironically, it was a sunny day; the clear sky was spreading above us on just one day after the disastrous rainfall.

Tropical Storm Brings Torrential Rain

Tropical Storm or Typhoon hit us severely in my city Utsunomiya yesterday.

It is reported that many people were injured and several citizens were dead due to floods or landslides.

I went to a department store by bus around 3:30 pm, had only half an hour before the store closing far earlier than usual because of the storm.

I Go to Ukiyo-e Print Sale

My wife and I went to Ukiyo-e Print Sale as for just seeing nice art exhibition.

The day we visited was the last day of the sale.
Ukiyo-e artists made woodblock prints of such subjects as kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; female beauties; travel scenes and landscapes.

It is said that those were produced from 17th through 19th centuries

Some of them were so expensive that I wondered there was a peson who could afford to buy them.