Nicole's Adventures in Japan

I hear that there has been some not so nice weather back home even some snow. I can't believe it. The weather has been really nice and this weekend was the best weather that we hav had since I got here. It was in the low 70's. My friend Crystal who works at the Jr. High and I spent the day riding our bikes and walking around Nagoya.
It started as a search for a parade to celebrate Princess Haru and if google were working I would give you all a history lesson. However our internet at school has been on the fritz and I don't have internet at home yet. So you luck out no history lesson, or you could go look it up for yourself. As we were searching for the Parade we wondered over to Nagoya Castle in search of more information about the Parade. On this occasion we decided not to go into the castle, but walk around the castle. It is a beautiful walk and I got my fix of all things green and beautiful. Part of the walk had trellises covered in wonderful smelling Lilacs. It is spring here and many of the flowers are in bloom. I got some great pictures here is one of my favorites.

Another picture I took was of three TV towers. There are TV towers everywhere, and they are not hidden at all, they seem to be part of the culture.

After walking around Nagoya Castle, we made another attempt to find the parade. We did find it and it was really interesting. You knew it was coming because there was a a lead police car. Our parades take up the whole street and they get blocked off, not so here. Actually it is only one lane of a very busy four lanes one way street. People don't wait around like for our Rose Festival Parade, but it is very impromptu they just kind of stop to watch as it comes along the street. The costumes and the dresses were very beautiful. The Princess of the parade was very beautiful. At the end of the parade there were a bunch of girls doing a dance routine it was really cute some of them were really young.
The Parade was really cool and Crystal and I had fun wondering around. Actually before making it to the a Castle we ran into an Earth Day Celebration, in the park way. There were a lot of Japanese Hippies, it reminded me of Portland and our Saturday Farmers markets.