First Week in Nakano!

Hello everyone!

 

We're Noëlle and Jin, both 25 years old and from The Netherlands. We've arrived at Yadoya Guesthouse on October 4th and we'll be staying until the 18th. That means we've got plenty of time to check out Nakano/Tokyo and show you what we've found.

Two days after our arrival, the real adventure started to explore the Nakano area. With the Nakano map in hand, we searched for all the restaurant (and shops) around, and we've found plenty that looked absolutely delicious. Of course, we haven't tried all of them yet, but on that day we've visited a traditional takoyaki shop, a nice small Chinese restaurant and a Japanese restaurant where they served a delicious unagidon (eel on rice) for only 500 yen! Definitely places you should check out for yourselves.

 

 

We ended the night in style by going to a classical concert. We hadn't planned it (as you might notice from our clothes haha) but Mari-san had two tickets left which she invited to us, and we happily accepted. It was an amazing concert with, of course, a lot of good music as well as a lot of sleeping Japanese people. 😉 All in all, it was a great day and our first real experience of Nakano.

 

 

This weekend Nakano city held its annual Nakano Nigiwai Festival, a two-day festival with lots of food stands on the streer and dancing and shows and much more. It all seemed like a lot of fun from the pictures we saw from previous festivals, but unfortunately for us, the weather suddenly changed. We've had sunny, hot days in the beginning, but this weekend the temperature has dropped slightly as rain started to fall.

 

The festival was supposed to start at 10:00 am, but as we waited with our umbrellas, nothing happened. We decided to ask and were told it was from 11:30 in front of the station. So we returned some time later to find a handful of people standing in the rain holding some speeches. Apparently they had planned an opening ceremony with taiko drums and everything, but decided to cancel it because of the rain.

As nothing else really happened and heavy rain continued, we headed back home ourselves.

 

On Sunday, the weather didn't become much better but we decided to go to another festival called the Tokyo Tech Festival, hosted by the Tokyo Technical University. Like most Japanese festivals, there were a lot of food stands here as well and we definitely ate a lot that day. The students also performed shows, like a juggling show and a magic show, which we enjoyed tremendously.

 

 

So even though we didn't see much of Nakano's own festival, we managed to see another and experience one of Japan's festivals by ourselves.

Our first week here was great and we look forward to this coming week to see what Japan has in store for us.

 

 

Noëlle & Jin