A warm sunny town festival

Chillin' in a pretty warm house tonight. This week has flown by, partly due to Aubrey's cold keeping her home on Thurs and Fri. We did go out to lunch (mostly at my request) and then to dip our feet in the ocean for Thurs lunch just b/c she needed to get out of the house and I was badly craving a particular restau's fried rice plate. Yum. The sun was so bright; we were only out there for about 40 minutes but my arms got well-toasted. Not burned, mind you.
So this morning we went to a town festival, called a Matsuri. I went out there w/ a friend and her 5-year-old son, both of whom are my English students. It was kind of like a fair in OKC or Tulsa or whatever, but:
-replace the vendors w/ lower-tech vendors and random people selling stuff that's one level up from garage-sale items;
-replace the myriad show animals w/ only one kind of show animal - piglets;
-replace the very numerous freaky and bizarre people w/ just normal Kikai people; and
-replace the rides and fun attractions at the Midway w/ a giveaway of balloon yo-yo things and a presentation from the Magi-Rangers (a knock-off of Power Rangers) on the wonders of the Kikai irrigation system.But it was a beautiful sunny day, pretty hot out in the sun and cool enough in the shade, w/ a slight breeze to keep us honest. Basically, we watched the Magi-Rangers do their pointless (dude, seriously) presentation and then either wandered to check out the stuff or sat in the shade and chatted. Aubrey came around lunchtime and we had some grilled meat called yakitori, which is killer tasty, and some French fries. Aub's snow-cone count by the end of the day was 4, while mine held steady at 1 normal one and 1 big one. I'd say I was there for about 4-4.5 hours and Aub for about 2.5 hours. The only part o' me that's redder than it was before is the tip of my nose (oops) but Aub didn't wear any sunscreen, citing a desire to get some color in her skin. Worked. Fortunately, she's not lobster-fied.
The highlight of my day was watching some kids play a piglet race. Each kid got a numbered piglet assigned to him or her and then tried to get the piglet to complete two laps around the pen by banging a metal pot w/ a wooden spoon behind it. It was pretty entertaining, I have to admit, especially since the piglets were numbered w/ spray paint on their backs. I don't know, man - to a city boy like me, that's some funny stuff. Spray-painted piglets. Anyway, afterwards, Aub and I went back home but I took a brief detour to visit our favorite Kikai Kitties to cause a bit of purring. Cats like scratches under the chin. It's a valuable life lesson.