Obi-Wan Shinobi

As promised, we spent this weekend enjoying our seemingly neverending adolescence - dressing up as ninja and running around making sword noises much as we might have done 20 years ago. We were far from being the only adults in costume and I'm not sure if that's astonishing or completely normal for this country. Once we had dressed up, bought our plastic swords and set out on our ninja scavenger hunt, the answer seemed to come to Sifton in a flash. "Why isn't everyone in Japan doing this right now?"

And to your right, possibly an undercover ninja

"Ninja town" (as it may or may not be called) is in Mie Prefecture, about 2 hours away from our neck of the woods, which meant we had to heave ourselves out of bed and be on our way by 7:30 in the morning. Takeaway coffees in hand, we eventually found our way to a special express train which took us out into the sticks, then on to a little boneshaker that seemed to barely clear the farmhouses (and farmers) on either side. If it weren't for the ninja posters everywhere we'd have found ourselves wondering whether we were going to the right place.

The trains were kind of a giveaway too

Once we were all assembled at the station, we set off to one of the registration booths and ponied up our costume rental money. The original plan (well, my original plan) was to dress up in Power Rangers colours but there turned out to be a baffling array of beiges, purples and sky blues, so we just went with our hearts and ended up with almost one of each. We were handed big bags of kit and jostled into the changing area, where Len and I were stripped down and rebuilt as something far superior. There were about 8 pieces to each ninja costume; pants, sashes, hoods, sleeves and pant legs, all with big long strings that had to be tied up just so. We emerged feeling slightly self-conscious, put our other clothes down on a tarp nearby and waited for the girls.

Transformation complete

The general idea of the Ninja Fest is to wander around town completing a series of challenges like ninja star throwing, archery and stealth, for which you're given a score on your little ninja card. We were only really interested in the ninja stars, so we made our way out in that direction, stopping on the way for amusing pictures of us "camouflaging" with things that matched our colour...

Deadly refreshment

...mimicking the ninja dummies posed around the town...

My favourite photo ever

 ...and generally carrying on like giggling 7 year olds.

Ninjas behaving badly

We found the ninja star place and lined up for what turned out to be a very strange game of darts, taking turns to pelt 5 shuriken at the target. Cori proved to be the deadliest of us more than once, nailing several bullseyes and instantly silencing anyone who might have been snickering at her pink outfit. I ended up about average at it, alternating throughout the day between deadly ninja and linguini-wristed princess.

Which is it gonna be? Do you feel lucky, punk?

Feeling we possibly needed to work on our skills a bit, we headed to the "House of Stealth and Endurance" next. We managed to attract the attention of a news crew on the way somehow, so if you hear the entire city of Nagoya laughing over the next few days, that's probably why.

I can't think of any other reason

The House was another series of games - completing a puzzle, throwing caltrops, knocking targets over with shuriken, killing a virtual ogre with a sword and stealing scrolls with a mini grappling hook. Lisa roundly beat everyone at the puzzle, Cori scored about a billion points on the caltrops, Len destroyed every target and buried a shuriken in a piece of wood, Sifton killed the ogre and a two-headed dragon and I had stolen nearly every scroll before the guy had time to say "you're only supposed to steal one". Much like the Power Rangers, when combined I think we made an awesome ninja.

Your scroll... is MINE

Training complete and immortalised in the evening news, we headed to the "Ninja Museum", making a brief pitstop on the way to indulge Sifton's somewhat puzzling desire to jump around in a ninja costume while people threw cherry blossoms at her.

It must be a Canadian thing

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching a live show, with demonstrations of how to actually throw shuriken and use swords that aren't made of plastic; wandering a real ninja house, complete with hidden weapons caches and rotating walls; and reading all about when, where, how and why it was all done in a historical sense. It was about the most you can learn in costume and I now feel like I understand a bit beyond the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" level.

Hey look, it's Raphael's missing sai

Before long it was time to head back and return our costumes, then we celebrated our return to normalcy with a round of hotcakes. Len had the equivalent of about 3 bags of sugar and fell asleep on the train home and I wasn't too far off doing the same. Seems I don't quite have the energy I did when I was 7.

Nothing else has changed, though

"We should go to samurai town next weekend," I joked, breaking the silence as we pulled back into Kobe.
"Is there a samurai town?" Sifton asked, suddenly alert. If there is, she'll find it. If she does, we'll be there. I think I've officially found a group of friends who will take any excuse to dress up and act like complete morons. If growing up means I can't do that any more, you can call me Peter Pan.

Wendy, I can fly!