September 13th, 2003
They can get bigger, too! At a festival in Kyoto last summer, we saw mikoshi three times this size! The bigger the matsuri, the bigger the mikoshi, I guess!
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| Festival in Shishihama | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, September 13th, 2003 |
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| So, you may have noticed (if you've read my main page, or my weblog) that a very nice couple invited me to their local festival on the 13th of September. I accepted their offer, and am really glad! I had a lot of fun--even though I think I got a mild case of heat stroke mid-afternoon. :P | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Me, wearing the happi the Nagasawas let me borrow, standing in front of the Jr High students' mikoshi. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Anyway, never been to a Japanese matsuri (festival)? Well, I'll give you a tour of the Shishihama Natsu-matsuri! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| So about 8:30AM Tomiyo Nagasawa picked me up from my apartment and took me to her house in the Shishihama neighborhood of Numazu City. (Apparently most Japanese cities are divided into these smalled, named neighborhoods... why? You've got me!) She gave me that blue happi you see me wearing in that picture, up there. They are traditionally worn at matsuri (festivals), and there are differnt kinds of happi for people of differnt ages. You'll see this in my other pictures. (: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Mr. Nagasawa, the superintendent of the Numazu Schools, left for the festival around 9:30, and we headed out soon after. There was an alley/street behind her house that ran along the beach, and that's where the festivities were taking place. We headed to the 'starting area' of the matsuri, and I met her friends there. I was an honorary member of the "Ladies Group" that day--I got a straw hat, too, and everything. So here's me and a few of the ladies (Tomiyo is to my right) before the matsuri got started. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I mentioned, with the first picture, that I was standing next to a mikoshi. Here's another one--the Ladies' Group's mikoshi. A mikoshi is usually translated as, 'portable shrine'. It's kind of a gift to the gods, decorated real purty, then carried around. The black box is for money donations. THIS mikoshi is a big barrel of sake, so is the one behind it. The Jr High kids' mikoshi and the young men's (which I have pictures of later) looked like miniature Shinto shrines. All four had phoenixes on top. The young children had a mikoshi, too--it was a ship that they pulled along. (: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This is a mikoshi, too! Many festivals also have one or two large mikoshi--people (usually men and boys, I think...) ride in/on them, dancing, singing and playing music while it is pulled around by other men. They can get bigger, too! At a festival in Kyoto last summer, we saw mikoshi three times this size! The bigger the matsuri, the bigger the mikoshi, I guess! |
Can you see the two different kinds of happi in this picture? The men ON the mikoshi are wearing black ones, while the men pulling it are wearing light blue. And up above, in my other pictures, you can see we women are wearing more of a 'crayon blue' happi. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| So let's get this matsuri started! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||