As all years, each shrine or district will bring out their Mikoshi for a parade. Mikoshi are small little buildings like a shrine. It is known to be use when you need to bring the god out of the shrine. In another words, you can say its the god's car!! Seems like it started in the past so as to pray for good harvest. (For more details you can go over here for a look 'Mikoshi'.) You can also see a lot of traditional performance from the Mikoshi, where people wears the traditional character mask and dance. A lot of these dancers are children too!!
Some province Mikoshi are just used to walk around the districts, some other places will have lots of them from different shrines (like where I lived), where they will act like showing their fierce when they come into each other on the way. So as to stimulate more power to bless the peasants.
Anyway, most of the people that come to join the crowd - like me, will be dressed in yukata (summer casual traditional japanese wear like kimono) and are here to enjoy the energy and power and have a nice time with the hawkers food!! If you have the chance to come to Japan in the summers, I do recommend late July & Aug, where it is the peak season for festivals!!
1 comment:
This looks like so much fun! One year, we'll have to come and see this for ourselves. Maybe we can make a movie together that involves a festival scene ;-)
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