Excursion Fail

There was a super-cool sounding event at the Kintai Bridge.  The premise, as I understood it, is that hundreds of years ago, the important dude who lived in the castle wanted to keep his vassals under control.  So he made a decree that they had to come see him every other year. This snowballed into a display of one-up-manship between the vassals and they all tried to out each other in their processions across the bridge to see the important guy.

April 29 commemorates this event and they reenact it.  Doesn't that sound fun?!  Joshua was going to help with the even with the Boy Scouts, and I sent him off to meet the troop and catch his ride out. Then I told the girls we were going to go as well. They were unenthusiastic.

We made the drive out just fine, and 1/2 mile from the event, we hit dead stop traffic.  We sat there for 20 minutes.  We eeked forward very slowly for another 15 minutes.  We were  almost to the traffic light where we could actually see the bridge when the Japanese police cane down the line of traffic and told us we had to turn around. (Not sure if parking was full or the parade would pass that way.) Everything ahead was apparently being closed off.

Since there had been much murmuring and unhappiness from the backseat, I made the executive decision to abort.

The girls were mostly appeased by a stop at 7-11 for delicious food and ice cream.

(Joshua had a great time.)

So close!  I could see the castle from the car! 

But on th plus side, I finally got a photo of this shrine.  We drive by it to Kintai and I always want to stop and check it out.  We sat in front of it for way too long this day.