Holy Squids that was fun.

Tonight was built up a lot.  Like a huge amount of pressure to be good, and I went in with expectations that were unrealistically high. But I was blown away; it was better than I could have ever dreamed.

First the build up.  Today I woke up late and went downstairs to find out that papasan's younger sister was in town with her two kids.  Then Kai and my Hostgrandma came in and I had the biggest family get together so far!  I liked my little cousins a lot, and we all played computer games together and talked about Pokemon and DS games.  For lunch we had...PIZZA.  From Pizza Hut.  But it was quite different-  all the toppings were different (my favorite was Camambert Pizza.) and the sizes were much more japanese (Read: The medium pizza in Japan is smaller than a small in America).  Still delicious, and a a long awaited delicacy.  While eating Pizza, we watched the earlier parade on TV, with lots of Kimon wearing people doing very elegantly rehearsed dances、 that were not the squid dance.

Suddenly we're all loading up in the car.  I convinced my little cousins to come along (somehow they weren't going to originally!)  When we pulled up, I was already really pumped- I could see a squid float with two robotic squids and the Ika Odori (In Japanese Squid Dance=Ika Odori) was blaring.

Little did I realize that that float was quiet compared to what was to come.  I walked up the street passing at least 20 squid themed floats, each of which was followed by different squid dancing teams. I was shocked- the parade was honestly boundless and kept going and going and going, with TONS of people dressed up with weird squid gear and costumes (I saw santa, power rangers, pokemon, a beer man, and obviously tons of creative squid gear.)

Oh. My. God. Amazing.

I was elated and couldn't wait for my turn. People were SO jacked up about dancing this dance. And the lights were SO bright and the noise SO loud and the people So enthusiastic.  People had obviously drunk a lot, and occasionally you would see a big  slosh of beer fly up in the air as they did the jumping part.

Me and my cousins (I forgot to mention their names: Kou, Sou, and Kai) found a free area right behind one of the loud bright music cars and got ready for the car to start driving.  The way the parade was set up was there would be floats or big cars that were COVERED in lights and loud speakers, and then groups of people would follow behind.  We were directly behind the last car, so we got to walk with it from one end of Hakodate to the other.  Which is about 2 Hours.  The squid song is 4ish minutes. you do the math on how many times I heard the same song.

Its infectious though; with each time I heard it I wanted more! My cousins all got into it too.  Mob mentality is great- I screamed so loud and jumped as high as I could, even when it was for things I didn't understand.  Oh, and I danced.  I squid danced like there is no tomorrow.

I could rave for hours.  And since your reading this and you probably know me, you probably will hear me rave about it, so I'll spare you for now.  But seriously, this is something that should be added to a list of things that should be done before you die.

High: IKA IKA IKA IKA, ODORI, ODORI!!!!! My ears are still ringing.  If anyone is interested, I'll load the song up for download.

Low:  For lack of a real low, I'll just say homework.

Hero: Papasan! I've been talking to him a lot more recently because its his vacation and he is home more.  Yesterday Jon met him in a video chat, and although neither could speak the other one's language, with me as a translator they somehow got to the topic of cars, and I was no longer needed! Cool how things like car language is universal enough to transcend the language barrier!