Wanwan Fest Apr., 2018

We need an expression to replace "when it rains, it pours."
The weather this past weekend was near-perfect. A bit cool in the shade, but very warm in the direct sunlight. A big departure from the past few weeks. The thing is, the City of Kagoshima had a LOT going on over the weekend, and there's still more coming up on Thursday and Friday. On top of all that, we're getting into Golden Week, the full 1-week national holiday in the Spring. I don't have any travel plans, and I do have some contract work I need to do during this period, but I am hoping to take it easy at some point, once I finish editing all my photos and videos (I took over 250 photos and 3 hours of video in the last 2 days...)



I'll start with Wan-Wan Fest, a celebration of all things dog, located in Tenmonkan in front of 7-11. The stage was pretty much dedicated to providing photo ops for owners and their pets, and for advertising dog care products. Nothing much I wanted to see, but I did like looking at some of the dogs in attendance.



There were a few activities for the dogs, such as this obstacle course, with fence jumping and hill climbing. The bulldog here was so busy panting, it never got around to running the course. There was also a frisbee catch event for bigger dogs at the other end of the arcade, but I didn't get to see much of that.



I had three lessons on Saturday, with a big break between 3 and 7 PM, but there wasn't much I wanted to look at in and around Tenmonkan. Instead, I went down to Dolphin Port to watch Dai Hanya. Unfortunately, I also had to do milk shopping for the week, and spent an hour at that, having to return to the apartment a mile away in the middle of the break to drop the milk off. Sigh.



I did swing back through Tenmonkan on Sunday at 2:30 PM on my way to Dolphin Port. Wan-Wan Fest was running strong again. For 500 yen (about $5 USD), you could have a professional dog groomer tend to your pet. The guy with the video camera is one half of the Party comedy duo. There's a TV monitor to his right, outside my photo, showing close-ups of the groomer as he trims this dog's fur. There was much ooh-ing and ah-ing as he worked.



Much fun was had by all.
After this, I passed through Central Park for the KYT TV event there, before walking to Dolphin Port. I stayed at the Port until 6 PM, watching the Dai Hanya dancers, then I went back home, before heading the opposite direction, to the main train station, for the big Beer Festa. I assume I didn't miss much else at Wan-Wan Fest.