Japanese Nara Festival

It had been a lovely warm Spring Saturday in the garden on and so in late afternoon we decided to head to the Japanese Nara festival in Canberra's Nara Park. It's a lantern festival celebrating Canberra's sister city relationship with Nara. The festival promised loads to do with masses of food stalls, a kite flying display, Japanese sword fighting etc. I didn't see any Sumo wrestlers, but I'm sure there would have been some there (probably queuing at one of the food stalls).

There were hoards of cars and people and we struggled to find a park in the nearby car park of the Chinese Embassy which was still an empty building plot, with only a signpost saying what it was supposed to be.

Unfortunately as the sun dropped (about 5.30pm) it grew colder and colder and the wind whipped up off Lake Burley Griffin. We'd wrapped the kids up a bit, but we were pretty much unprepared for the sudden 10 degrees drop in temperature.

In the end we only stayed for half an our or so, which was a shame as the festival looked good but we chose instead to grab a few sausages from the obligatory sausage sizzle (they came with Teriyaki sauce) and head home.

Here's a few pictures of Audrey looking cold and grumpy. Some days it's hard when you're 3 years old and your Dad drags you to some freezing cold park (without slides) to watch people making origami animals.

Not an award winning picture of Audrey and kites (note the size of the bottom lip)