Seki's knife fame comes from it's Katana (Samuri sword) making heritage. It's location near the incredibly fresh water of the Nagara river and the quality of the soil made it ideal for forging swords. We watched a demonstration of traditional sword making with the blacksmiths in traditional dress.
After this we found a carpark transformed into a fighting and sword demonstration arena where surprisingly few of the crowd had ended up.
In the evening we made our way to Mino and walked around the pretty, old streets to atmospheric music shuffling through the crowds looking at the huge array of lit up paper lanterns. There were wedding dresses, globes, even a church made of paper and lit up. There were a couple of live music venues and all the cafes and shops were open. It was really cold strolling around and the late night opening and festive atmosphere reminded us of a Christmas market in England.
Today we went to a garden party in Mino and met some of the lantern artists. There are currently four foreign paper artists staying and working in Mino. Two of my students are working as translation helpers and invited us to the party mostly because of the coincidence of there being a young English woman from around Bristol among the artists. It was very nice to chat to her and of course she'd spent time living in Brighton-who under 30 hasn't it seems?! We met many other interesting people; Japanese and otherwise. The temperatures in the day are still in the high twenties but if you keep to the shade it's quite comfortable and the blue skies mid-October are really glorious.
So a lovely fusion of new vs old, Japanese vs foreign and summer vs winter this weekend.
P.S Mum for you a picture of the carp in the river:
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