kite festival

We are now a two computer family!! So, Jason can use one computer to do his school work and I can use the other to edit pictures. Today I am going back and finally posting some pictures that had been skipped over ...

First up, the kite festival. This was actually on Jan. 10.

There is a large horse racing track near our apartment. I had to ride by it every day on the way to my previous school. It was odd because I frequently noticed there were a lot of people in the stands, but there were never any horses running. Then one of my teachers explained to me that they don't actually ever run any races there, they just show races on the jumbotron.
It's also the site of Himeji's annual kite festival. There were kites of all sizes -- it was really impressive to watch them launch the really big ones. Sometimes the launches weren't successful and the kite would get damaged. They had a repair area where the teams would go, make some adjustments or repairs and then line up to launch again.
I also liked the "string kites" that had 100 kites on one string. Jason and I bought our own little kite so that we could join in the fun. I also liked to watch the little kids take hold of the kite string at just start running around haphazardly.


It was especially funny that they were still showing horse races on the jumbotron and there were a lot of people sitting in the stands watching them.
There are more pictures on the picasa site. (They are in chronological order -- so look back to Jan. 10.)