The Festival Special

Heyooooo,

It is me. Summer is over and you probably won't believe how happy I am that the time of sweating while literally doing nothing has finally passed. As a farewell gift, our beloved sun couldn't resist and bestowed upon me a mighty sunburn last weekend. What a fucking prick. Sorry (not sorry) for the language. Yeah, yeah, I probably should have had put on some sunscreen but that is besides the point. You might ask what I even did outside in the sun in the first place, well, one word: festivals!

Summer in Japan really is festival season, and I don't mean music festivals. They are more akin to town fairs. There is food, drink, and some combination of music, dancing, parades, floats, fireworks, or performances. Each festival has its unique flair and I am now going to report on all the ones I have visited throughout summer. Here we go!

At the beginning of August I went to the biggest festival of Yamagata City, namely Hanagasa Matsuri ("Matsuri" means festival, duh). The main part of this festival is a massive parade of costumed dancers along the main street of the city. They perform a dance using a conical straw hat adorned with flowers, which is called "Hanagasa", and a special song is played over loudspeakers along the entire length of the street. There were a lot of people crammed into the tiny spaces of the sidewalks. I couldn't take nice pictures so here is the one from their official website to give you an idea of what it looked like.

The song really got annoying after half an hour on loop but the parade would continue for another three hours. I ended up paying the food stalls multiple visits. No regrets.

The next festival was at the end of August in a small city north of here named Shinjō, and the festival bears the rather intuitive name "Shinjō Matsuri". I know, right? But don't be fooled by an apparent lack of creativity for naming festivals. They more than make up for that with their floats. Yep, floats. For this particular occasion each city district makes their own float which usually depicts some scene of Japanese history or mythology (if you go back in time far enough it is basically the same thing). During the festival they then parade their floats around town playing each a different variation of the same song with flutes, cymbals, taiko (Japanese drums), and shamisen (Japanese instrument with three strings). This gets quite funny when two districts pass each other since they then run the risk of matching the other's tune. They try to fight this urge by just playing louder. As I said, quite entertaining. Oh, and did I mention that there is a lot of alcohol involved? Yeah, that just adds to the entertainment value. The locals actually get days off to got to the festival. No school, no work, just awesome. The festival is registered as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage after all. Unfortunately the battery of my camera died after taking like eight pictures, but I am going to share what I can. Here you go.

This guy clearly had a drink or five.

Everyone can vote to decide the best float. The following picture shows the one that won this year. I concur.

The whole shebang started around 1 pm. Unfortunately I had to get the last train going back to Yamagata, which was around 9 pm. The festival goes on for three days but the last two days were not blessed by the weather god.

The last festival I went to however was certainly blessed by the sun goddess, since it was the reason for my sunburn. This one was located a few hundred meters from my apartment on both sides of the Mamigasaki river. "Heimspiel", as we say in Germany. The name of this one is "Imonikai", which describes the occasion perfectly. I mean, it literally translates to "potato stew party", and that is pretty much what is was. And it was massive. You see, they cook potato stew for 30,000 people in a SINGLE pot with a diameter of 6.5 meters. They even use two small excavators in the process. It lasts from 9 am to 4 pm. There are lots of food stalls if you don't fancy the stew though and quite a few other attractions. They built two bridges across the river so people can easily reach the opposite side of the river. Here are some pictures.

I had to wait in line for about an hour to get my serving of potato stew so I was rather eager to eat the damn thing. Soooo, I kind of forgot to take a picture of it. Sorry.

That's it for my report on local festivals. I don't know what the coming months have in store for me but I am sure I'll find something exciting to tell you about. Until then!

Cheers,

Nils