The servants have spent hours decorating the gardens for the festival under the watchful eye of the governor's own officials. Large paper lanterns in various hues of orange and red hang from the fungal stalks, colorful ribbons, illuminated by the warm lights fluttering in the gentle, though the night air is still uncomfortably hot. Heimin selling shaved ice, onigiri and cold drinks roam the garden, each of them wearing a haori showing the governor's personal mon, greeting each and every samurai with a forced smile on their lips.

At the western parts of the garden, large, colorful paper kimono have been hung between tall stalks while strings of paper cranes, folded by the heimin children, hang from the lower branches of the alien fungi. Two samurai minstrels, both carrying an authentic shamisen walk among the crows, playing songs dating back to the Rokugan of old.

Each game below costs 5 zeni to play once.

Ring Toss
Several prizes are put on display and the participant must land their rings on a corresponding space to claim a prize. The participants roll Athletics/Agility at TN15 to claim one prize and may call raises to claim additional prizes with their attempts.

Prizes her includes communicator shells, baseball player cards, and various netsuke of the Fortunes.

Rafflestrings
A game of pure chance where the participant pulls on a string among several bundles of them. Upon pulling a string that is attached to a corresponding prize, the participant wins it! The participant rolls a 1d10 and claims a prize depending on the result!

1-5: Nothing
6-7: a small clay statue of a Fortune
8-9: a small 1' plushie of local fauna
10: a large 2' plushie of local fauna

Goldfish Scooping
The participants are given a small scoop made with washi paper and a bowl to scoop out young bronze fi from a shallow pool filled with them. The objective is to scoop out as many goldfish from the pond before the wash paper breaks.

Participants roll Hunting/Perception at TN15 to get one goldfish and may try again but the next difficulty is raised by +TN2 (going from 15 to 17, then 17 to 19 and so on). On failure, the washi paper breaks and the game is over.

The day would have been perfect if not for the humid stickiness in the air and the awful stench that permeated the planet seemingly non-stop. Still, Hide was excited to get to do some normal non-life threatening things for once. After yesterday, Hide really needed this kind of deal.

She arrived in a decent quality dark blue yukata with an orange geometric pattern. She didn’t really want to catch too much attention at this thing after yesterday, so she kept her pattern subtle.

Joo himself was clad in a yukata of his clan's colors.

He smiled, glancing up at the sky. Hopefully the Fortunes - especially Benten - will listen to his prayer. "Ah, Matsu-san, greetings!"

Hide was a bit surprised at the new voice calling out to her. She couldn’t quite place it, likely due to the fact she hadn’t yet met this Unicorn. She didn’t remember an Iuchi at the Lion and Unicorn meeting. “Ah, I don’t think we have quite met yet.”

She offered a polite bow, “Matsu Hide. Marine.”

A Spider bushi wandered into festival decorated garden. Shokomaru recalled the last time a party was held here. That was something, alright. And since then he's avoided dealing with...well...most anyone. Rightly so. That changed today, unfortunately. It'd just be downright rude and foolish of him to not show up to the party. He had some tradition to observe with the monks later, anyway.

Still...first...

He straightened his black yukata and waltzed over toward the ring toss. It was time to flail hopelessly at carnival games.

The Unicorn and Matsu got a bow, if they were wise enough to do so first. If not he'd ignore them.

Joo bowed to the Lion, and then to the Spider. "Iuchi Joo-Woo, scholar. Well met." He smiled. "Enjoying yourself?"

Hide offered a polite bow to the Spider... Who didn’t seem to be joining them. Alright. She turned her attention back to the Iuchi and just offered a smile. “Ah, well, so far yes. Waiting for someone to show up. I think I might be a tad early.”

Joo nodded. "Ah, I see. It's always good to be early, my father always says." He smiled. "Quite strange...the day after tomorrow we'll be engaged, Fortunes' willing."

"yeah, a full round, come on and let me show you how rigged this game is", he told the attendant with an annoyed smirk.

He took his 10 rings and stood at the stall, concentrating for a minute "Just watch, 2 out of 10 at best, that's carnie games."

When the first ring went right on target, he stopped. Blinked a few times, then scowled at the attendant. "You're fucking with me, aren't you?"

“Yeah, it’s crazy. The days have gone by so fast.” And Hide had been through all kinds of hell the entire time. “Did you invite anyone special to join you for the festivities?”

the next throw, it was like the target physically moved out of the way at the last moment. Or maybe it was just Shokomaru's lack of coordination. blame the right thing! He scowled in silence.

Then a hit. Well, well, well.

Miss.

Hit? The Spider was on a roller coaster of pass and fail. he'd never really been excited by festival games, he wished his sister were there to see it.

Miss..oof. Then two more. He let out a breath. There it was.

Then right on the mark again. "Ha!"

And a proper fail to wrap it up.

He light a smoke. "Yeah, thanks...", he was handed a bag of prizes. "Hey, no. Put them over there, in that space. If any some poor fucker comes by here trying to impress someone way out of their league and they loose bad, hook them up with my winnings, tell them the fortunes are kind, maybe we'll both get some karma out of it."

"Ie, or at least, Idid not wish to be pushy. In case the Fortunes feel we should meet today, I won't complain. Found a hopeful match then?" He observed the spider antics. Compassion from a Daigotsu?

It seemed over at the ring toss table, there were a few gifts that were left out by a generous previous participant. When asked, the worker there would merely tell anyone that they were up for grabs, preferable for someone who didn't win. Some of these items include a snazzy green sparkly communicator shell, the baseball card of Shiba Quan, another baseball card of Daidoji Reiko (both who were baseball players of no import) and a faux-clay netsuke of Uzume (the Fortune of Dancing).

After an eventful day, even Eriko had to admit that she could stand to lose a few dosages of excitement in her life. Tanabata could prove to be plenty of fun and especially the sort of activity that didn't need to be dangerous to be fun. She hadn't worn a yukata in a while and was half-tempted not to bother but she did catch word that supposedly the local people here were going to throw one on for that old-fashioned charm.

However, the old-fashioned designed didn't exactly catch her interests but she did manage to get a yukata that had both retro and modern stylings to it. Her outfit had an old-fashioned stripe design with black flora prints on her sleeves.

“Oh, yes I have found myself a hopeful... Match.” Hide trailed off as she spotted Eriko, who was actually wearing a yukata much to her surprise and definitely also to her delight. She waved in an attempt to catch the Kuni’s attention, well hopefully. There were a lot of people around, after all.

Shokomaru almost stopped and introduced himself to the pretty lady walking by, but recognized some Crabness about her and found somewhere else to fuck off to. Ah! String raffles.

"I'll take 10 pulls."

Eriko gave Hide a smirk when she noticed Hide and strolled over to her, dodging the shaved ice maker and the shamisen player on the way. She gave her and her company a quick bow with a small smile on her face. "Good evening everyone, nice night and all that, eh?"

She lowered her tone slightly as she half-whispered to Hide, "Is it over yet?"

“You look really nice. I actually didn’t expect you to come in a yukata, so consider me pleasantly surprised.” Hide made room for Eriko to join in the conversation.

When Eriko leaned in to whisper, Hide’s expression turned slightly confused. She then whispered back, ”Is what over?”

"The festival, it's a bit on the corny side, I admit," she whispered back.

"Oh, believe me, I didn't think I would come in a yukata either. But, it's custom around here and I didn't want to ruffle any feathers by just coming in business casual. Now we just need some guards in old samurai armour and we could look like we're in the middle of a Feudal-Faire. But, thanks for the thought, Hide-san," she smirked at the Matsu.

"Well... We could slip out at some point to find a good place to be alone," Hide returned the whisper yet again. She was feeling bold tonight.

"Well, I for one would like to think I'd look dashing in the armor of my ancestors!" The Matsu stood up straight and puffed out her chest as an emphasis. "Actually, I have pictures of it. Very popular among the Matsu."