Onomichi, a lantern delight!

---

So a lot of our trip has us hitting up places somewhat randomly. We made a stop in Onomich because we had read a blog on festivals in Japan and were intrigued be the lantern festivals. This one just happened to be midway between Hiroshima and Sukoku and fell right on the day we needed to travel so it felt like happenstance that we should follow. As we approached on the train it was quieter and the skies were clear, no wind at all. You would not know that typhoon no. 19 was crossing over Japan hours down the coast. We arrived after sunset so a few lanterns were already set up at the train station. There were tons of volunteers handing out pamphlets and maps and it was crowded, but not overwhelming. We made our way to Singai Cabin hostels which was a longish bus ride and would have been a super far walk from the station/boardwalk, but was very close to one of the main shrines. To check-in to the hostel you had to go to a restaurant that was a bit of a walk away, but the folks were nice and once we had the codes and stuff we were super happy with the place. Like this hostel was LUXE! One of the best I have ever stayed in and definitely wish we had more days booked there.

We put our sticks together and made our way out to the streets just following the crowds. There was a drumming group that came through as we got to the bottom of the first stairs and that was cool to see, but not as amazing as the thousands of lanterns that lined the streets. From what we read, all the lanterns were made and designed by school children from the area. They were all so varied and it was just such an indescribable site (that I will now describe, ha!) as they lined the streets. It became clear that each class/school had it's on area and everyone was proudly displaying their lanterns showing them to family and friends and running off to see their friend's. The whole vibe was quaint, peaceful and sort of festive, but not in the way that food and such was being hawked on the streets, just an overall feeling of happiness. As I said before, the weather was great. The skies were clear and the moon and stars were out. We climbed up the first shrine and once at the top the lanterns were laid out in all manner of patterns, waves, circles, lines. And there was classical music being played by a youth orchestra. After this temple, we followed the crowds down and some misunderstanding of the map and the lay of the land has us walking uphill, but we stumbled upon a lantern installation that someone had put up in their backyard that was super cool. Then it was onward passed a cemetery as we made our way to the ropeway that was supposed to be open late into the evening for the festival, but wasn't. So Susan decided she would stil try and climb towards another one of the shrines and I decided to head out and search for a place to eat. We both failed. We wound up back over by our hostel where we had seen several restaurants and the first few seemed not interested in dealing with only English speakers (this was the first time we had encountered that vibe on the trip), but we found a family run soba shop and with the help of google translate ended the night with a large bottle of Asahi and steaming bowls of bonito soba and tempura for Susan.

---