O Matsuri

Trip Start Apr 20, 2004

Trip End Aug 28, 2005

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Flag of Japan Nagoya, Japan
Sunday, July 17, 2005

O Matsuri - the Japanese Festival. One major credit I give to the Japanese is that they know how to put on a festival and believe me this country has a festival for everything! I mean everyting - from the standard New Year (which we missed as we were in Thailand), summer fireworks (Hanabi) to the more bizare like the Vagina festival and festivals for everything inbetween! Really just an excuse to eat festival food and drink crazy quantities of beer in public with your mates.
Our first introduction to the festival was last summer at the Gifu Hanabi. This is rated one of the finest firework displays in Japan and is staged down at the Nagara river. Something like 30,000 fireworks are let off continusouly taking about 1.5 hours -sure a far more spectacular display than the good ol kiwi backyard job Warehouse Big Boom Box!!! What makes this festival even more fun is the dressing up in the summer kimono or Yukata as it is called. When in Rome....you know the rest. So we rattled up a crowd of kiwis all dressed up Japanese (eventually - tracy had to get a random Japanese mother/daughter team to re tie her obi at the bus station), beers and chu-hi in hand, stood on the banks of the river watching the fireworks, shouting "SUGOI!" - great every couple of big bangs and taking pics on our cellphones. Well that is how we planned it but knowing how disorganised we are and how difficult it is to actually tie an obi (tie around the kimono) and find the right bus we ended up watching most of the fireworks with our heads poking out the windows of the bus - beers and chuhis in hand and shouting SUGOI! - this behavious provided great entertainment for the locals also riding the bus.

4 Kiwis disguised as Japanese!

We were lucky enough to arrive in time for the finale of blasts. After the excitement of Hanabi it was time to meet up with other fellow westerners and hit the karaoke for the night!
The Vagina festival. Held once a year in Spring at a Shrine of small town somewhere in Aichi (cant remember where sorry) followed a week later by the Penis festival! In this festival men and women of all ages celebrate fertility and womens health. Very interesting - the festival started with a parade, people carraying huge Mocha cakes (which closely resemble a breast)and other offerings for the shrine, dancers, taiko (japanese drums) players etc. Once the offerings had been presented to the shrine the madness began. The cold sake was handed out, the taikos were playing, people sucking on very interesting lolly pops! We got amongst the festivities, forced the cold sake into us and set about praying for our womens health (note - no praying for fertility yet). In doing this we prayed and threw our yen into the Vagina rock and then had to crawl under this small Torii gate - sounds easy just hope it works!
We have only had one local festival in the city we live in and that was the Hanami or cherry blossom viewing festival held in spring - i wrote about this in the Iwakura blog so wont say any more except - why do the cherry blossom trees bare no cherrys and maybe this is why I have never previously appreciated the cherry blossom before as NZ cheery trees have cherrys not beautiful blossoms?
The food is some of the most exciting attractions to a festival - unlike the NZ hotdog, chips and candyfloss, Japanese festival food is far more exciting.

Dan and Jimmy

Okonomiyaki as ive already mentioned is my fav, Takoyaki- balls of octopus, cabbage and batter, karage - fried chicken, satsumaimo - fried kumara with sugar!, jagabata - steamed potato with butter, salt and mayo, yakitori - meat and squid on sticks, choconana - choc coated banana, crapes and shaved ice.
By far the most crazy festival we have seen was the Fire Festival of Tejikara down by the Nagara River in Gifu at the start of August. The entire festival is preformed under a shower of fireworks falling from tall totem like polls. The guys wear only loincloths round their lower half and carry portable shrines loaded with gunpowder on their shoulders. The gunpowder of shrines is set fire which shoots streams of fire high into the sky and showering the approx 20guys holding it. At the same time there are more guys dancing wildly sounding bells and setting firecrackers off. The most impressive part of this festival was the hand held fireworks called Tetutsu Fireworks. Guys hold these large cannon like tubes stuffed with gunpowder that explode showering them with fire - insane! Apparently a brave festival of sound and fire but we thought more a festival of crazy quantities of sake and madness!