5/31 Takashimaya and Firefly Festival

A while back Rin had asked if I was interested in going to a Firefly festival south of Matsuyama. Kind of out of the way. She, herself, couldn't go but would set me up to head out with her kouhai (underclassman) named Manami. I asked her if it was okay to bring some friends, so I did. I know that at least Anna went.

We were supposed to meet at around 4:30 at the largest shopping mall in the city, Takashimaya, which doubled as a train station.. I got there super early so I actually went and checked out the top floor of the Takashimaya shopping mall. I will include some pictures below. The roof was really nice. Besides the view, there was a restaurant, kids play area, and Ferris wheel. It was like a huge park several stories up.

Eventually everyone else arrived. Most of the people who were invited were in the same Faculty of Collaborative Regional Innovation as me, so I got to meet some people. We got on the train, and took it to a stop way out in the middle of nowhere. From there, we had two taxis waiting to take all of us to a high school. It was a really nice sunset drive through quiet towns and over rivers, going up into the mountains. We arrived at the high school, and boarded a shuttle bus to take us up to the festival. Man that thing was crowded and the roads were very windy.

We got there and met some of our other study abroad classmates. I think that included Sharon and Omar. But I'm not sure who else. I'm pretty sure that Saku was there.

We took pictures of the amazing scenery amidst the flood of people, and made our way up to the shrine area. There were loads of stalls lining the steep and curvy driveway, and as we were walking I heard "Austin!" I looked and there was a hot dog stand fundraising for some on campus organization. There were Junsei and Teppei, and they were excited to fill me in on the event. It seemed that the entire event was a partnership with Ehime University, but specifically my faculty.

I continued up the road while talking note of the food and smells. It turned out to be a very small area for the event, yet a huge crowd of people. I quickly came back, and some of us decided to get some food. They were selling wild boar stew (shishiniku) and a type of mixed steam rice called takikomigohan (now one of my favorites. I think Anna and I waited in line and then grabbed some. It was so packed that there were no seats, so we went around the site of the kitchen building and ate on the ground. It was totally fine, because we got a great view of the sunset inbetween the rice paddy valley walls. The wild boar didn't taste that great, it was very gamey and little actual flavor in it. So, I found the mixed rice to be the saving point.

Some of the others got some shaved ice, I don't remember if I did, but we all went together over to the shrine grounds. It was my goal to find a "firefly omamori," but all they had were the usual. Nothing special for the occasion. The people selling them were actually affiliated with Ehime University, and I took a flyer about Shinto. I don't know if I still have it haha.

There wasn't much else going on, but I was able to catch a frog. I let it go, of course. As it got dark we walked up and around a pond, before realizing it led nowhere. It was all in the hopes of seeing the namesake of the festival = fireflies. From the pond I could hear the variety of events going on at the shrine. There were musicians and speakers, they even had the play troupe from the musical I saw in Toon City way back when. 

I think that at 8:30 was the last shuttle back to the high school. We went down to catch it, but the line was longer than the amount of seats on the bus! So we decided that we had to hike it. Manami reserved a couple of taxis down by the high school, and so we had to rush to meet them. We hurriedly dashed down the curvy road, dodging any cars going by, and actually saw more fireflies along the way than at the event.

We needed the taxis to drop us off so we could make it on the last train, and we were getting worried that we wouldn't make it. But we did! We said goodbye as people got off at their stops, and I biked back home. I made sure to give tons of thanks to Manami for her help, and I told Rin all about it.