Hofu Flee Market

By the way, really...no one pronounces it Hofu. Its pronounced Hohu which just really throws me off. I was doing a game of "hangman" with 4 real smart girls in my Wednesday English club, and the spaces were: "I love Ho_u". They live in HOFU! Its always spelled Hofu! But, it took them many tries to figure out the F. The man was almost hung. I don't understand why they don't just spell it Hohu if no one can say Hofu.

But yay Hofu! I love my city!

This last Saturday there was a famous "flea market" that only comes around to Hofu 1 time per year! I don't think it should be called a "flea market" (and probably isn't in Japanese), because it is more like a city-wide festival. And when I say citywide, I mean that this was 10 times bigger than even the biggest event I've seen in this city yet. Big streets, small streets, shopping areas, taxi areas, where everything normally is---was inundated with food stalls, goods stalls, performances,...all the firefighters were out shaking kids hands, people were dressed up like famous characters. It was a pretty cool day!

It did remind me of the Orange County fair, but without the rides. There were definitely the games. I need to talk to someone about getting some rides up in here. :)

This is a very bad picture of me eating KOREAN food! Yay! There was an international section of the flea market. My friend Anna had really good information on this area, because she took me to a booth were we needed only to fill out a short survey, and we would get 500 Yen of free money to spend in this international area!

So this bowl of Korean food was free, and I spent my other 300 yen of free money on "kim" which is korean seaweed amazingness (which they DO NOT sell in the stores in Japan) and some Korean spicy ramen packs that I'm saving for a rainy day. I ended up spending a lot more of my own money at the Korean booth, which was probably a bad idea since I'm going to Korea in less than 2 weeks... But I needed Kim Chi NOW! :)

Most of the flea market was just that--a flea market where everyone was trying to make money and sell their goods. But I noticed that a lot of it seemed to be non-profit. This "Come Up Smiling" campaign was to benefit those that lost everything in the tragic mudslides here. You can see on the bottom green part it says "Hofu 2009.7.21". The mudslides were literally just 6 days before I got here. And the city seems to be still in recovery. I lot of people lost their lives, and a lot of people lost everything else. Way to go volunteer work and non-profit!

This is Yamaguchi Prefecture's mascot! I don't really know whats going on with him (green haired guy). I can't find anything online, to help me explain. But the best I can gather from just hearing things here and there, and seeing signs in Japanese, is that in 2011 it will be Yamaguchi Prefecture's turn to host some sort of national olympics type of thing. All over the city there are signs with this guy on it. It seems like they are city beautification areas. Empty lots are going under construction to be turned into beautiful parks, etc.

There is also a money collections box in every single school office I've worked at here. Like everyone is getting donations for this Prefectural beautification project. I'm not 100% sure though. Information is a little difficult for me to get here...so I just form stories of the truth in my head. For all I know this is just some famous cartoon character. hehe. No really, its something to do with the 2011 games.

So Hofu was the showplace for the day of the "car of the future". I couldn't figure out what was so futuristic about it, besides the way it looks. The sign about it was in English and Japanese. Didn't say anything about it being hecka hecka fuel efficient. I was pretty rad though. They didn't let anyone take pictures IN it. :(

Cool car! A car like this in Hofu... Its like seeing a car like this, in... Beaumont. Sorry family in Beaumont. Its just like that though! :)

Above: just one of the many performances. I just got a clip of this performance because the little girls were so cute! They were only about 5 or 6 years old max.