Suizenji Park in September

Today, Graham and I and a few other students went to Suizenji Park and the downtown shopping area. Before we entered the park, we heard drums down the street and went to see what was happening. This coming Monday is the Fujisaki-hachimangu festival, which includes a huge parade of people, portable shrines, lion dancers, and decorated horses. All around town, we saw groups of people and horses practising for the festival. The particular group we saw at Suizenji was performing for the seniors of a nursing home. 


 
They get the horse to "dance" by pushing it around a bit and running with it. It might look a bit stressful, but the horse seemed fine, and it was pet and fed carrots by the seniors afterwards. I heard that in the past they used to get the horses drunk...? Not completely sure if that's true or not!

We'll be attending the festival on Monday with a group of students and friends. It will be extremely busy downtown then. 

There are a lot of shops and restaurants around Suizenji park, selling specialty products from Kumamoto (a ton of Kumamon-themed products) and other knick-knacks. I bought a little Kumamon to dangle off my backpack. Within the park, there are also souvenir shops, a large shrine, tea house, and a place where you can get good-luck charms and fortunes. It's an interesting place! We took a lot of pictures.


The best ones are here. 

After the park, we went to shop in the downtown shopping area. Tomorrow we're going to Kumamoto Castle, so we will have lots more to post about!