Kakunodate

Honestly, I'm all blogged out (happens every time), but I gotta keep writing for my descendants to read in 1000 years.

We continue our journey. Today we go to Akita province, and visit a traditional Samurai town.

Our inn had a "giant" shoehorn with stand. I really appreciate shoehorns after this trip.

Vending machines must blend into the background.

Kakunodate

We made it!

The town was pretty cool, no cars allowed during the day, cherry blossoms in full bloom as well.

We visited the sakura festival! Haven't been to one before specifically for cherry blossoms. We went to a festival in Takayama awhile back and it was pretty similar.

The dreary rain didn't make it as enjoyable as it could've been.

Lots of interesting food along the footpath.

This was the nice view just next to the footpath of the festival.

We finally entered our first "samurai house". First observation is that they're... shorter than people today.

This precarious death trap hangs over us as we enter.

You can lift and feel the naginata, which has probably slain countless enemies and keyboard warriors.

There was a... yukata shaped sleeping bag. Oodies before oodies were cool!

You can get an idea of the small frames of the samurai back then, I'm not a 'museum guy', but it was actually really cool to see the historical stuff.

The guy had a huge garden and house. I'm jealous, until I quickly do some quick maths in my head to work out how much a gardener would cost to keep this place going.

Us looking wistfully outside, waiting for inspiration for our next calligraphy, artwork, poetry and EDM loops.

Bukemaru is the town's mascot. He's a dog that sings along with music that comes on every hour (poor dog). Super cute Akita breed. We're in the Akita region by the way.

Bukemaru doesn't actually DO anything, he just kinda sits there and gets his photo taken.

Out of all of our Japan trips, we had our first exposure to Kamen Rider today. It was... actually WAY cooler than I expected.