as promised...
What an amazing weekend. I'm so glad that this festival didn't take place until after my arrival in Japan -- I can see it easily becoming something to look forward to every summer that I'm in Kiryu. As planned, I saw some friends from Tokyo this weekend as well, which really put the icing on the cake for me.
Okay, enough of this. I'll let the pictures tell the story... there are a million of them, enjoy!
(oh..there's no particular sequence...I lost patience with the program I use to import the images to my blog so these pictures are completely random. sorry! hopefully the captions will suffice...)
"a true American tradition" haha, who knew?
this may not excite you, but to me, it was Christmas...skim milk in Japan! I've found the impossible!!
the stage for a Yagibushi singing contest...the finals from the competition I attended Friday afternoon
the Yagibushi band/singers' stage at the main intersection of the festival...there was a smaller version of this every block or so playing non-stop music from at least 7-10 every night, the crowd of people are all dancing
I couldn't get over how cute the little girls were in their yukata...mostly a combination of red, yellow and hot pink
haha...I love Japan for tshirts like this
my cell phone!
a local dance troupe in Sundays "Jumbo Parade"
teenaged girls walking the street barefoot, shoes in the plastic bag... I walked behind them a bit and realized they had been wearing the wooden platform shoes (geta) traditionally worn with yukata...very flat, very wooden, very blister inducing. (one of my favorite things about this weekend was seeing the young people out of their school uniforms and wearing their own style clothing. There was a lot of casual stuff similar to America, but I hear that there were a lot more teenagers in yukata this summer than in recent memory...the best were the girls wearing a super cute yukata, obi tied in a traditional knot, and untied converse all-star hightops...fantastic stuff)
the "mikoshi," a super heavy temple-type float that gets carried down the parade route by a group of hardworking people...usually the close of the parade
this is my Sunday yukata...I had no one to help me get dressed, so I took my obi off very carefully Saturday night and practiced re-tying it so that I could do it all by myself Sunday morning (and did a darn good job if I say so myself, little grandmas everywhere were impressed with my results!)
one of the dueling dragons in the parade..this one was host to a handful of my friends who are here teaching English with JET and other private programs. They had to run around in a big circle every block or so...it looked exhausting
more parade dancers...
a drum troupe performing in the parade
random float carrying a little Yagibushi band in Sunday's parade
the ribbons being worn by these men signify their positions in the local government...important folk (despite the silly pink pompom on their hats)
my friend Eri and I outside a restaurant where we ended the night on Saturday..Eri's mom and grandma came over to dress me in my yukata that night (this is my favorite one!)
a closer shot of one of the Yagibushi stages that I mentioned earlier...you can see a bit more of the band in this shot
the first performer in the Yagibushi singing concert that I attended on Friday afternoon at the City Performing Arts Center
one of my fellow JETs and I (in my Friday yukata) at the restaurant where my office welcoming party was held
from the time they started to put them up last week, these lanterns have been one of my favorite matsuri aesthetics
it doesn't look amazing, but this is the very first meal that I made for myself with all Japanese ingredients and I was quite proud (people take pictures of their food ALL the time here, so its not as weird as it may seem...)
this is the "hapi" coat provided for me by City Hall in the event that I didn't wear yukata...many groups, neighborhoods and companies have a hapi coat that everyone from their organization wears at the festival events
Friday after work we stumbled on the kindergarten parade, where all of the kindergartens were marching around with their little hats, hapi coats and mikoshi...too cute for words
some of the decorations lining the main street in Kiryu
one of the cuter things I saw all weekend...this group of moms and small children were all dressed in traditional clothing, sharing shaved ices and just being adorable (shaved ice is basically a snow cone, only smarter because its always in a plastic cup and never in a leaky paper cone)
a section of the first floor of a 3-4 story bicycle parking garage next to the Kiryu train station...its huge and completely full
one of the signs near my apartment advertising for the festival... the amazing thing about all of these decorations is that they went up gradually over the course of last week, but when I rode my bike to work this morning there wasn't even a hint that signs like this were posted, that lanterns had lined a mile of city streets or that dozens of vendors had sold food on the streets for three days...
Okay, enough of this. I'll let the pictures tell the story... there are a million of them, enjoy!
(oh..there's no particular sequence...I lost patience with the program I use to import the images to my blog so these pictures are completely random. sorry! hopefully the captions will suffice...)
"a true American tradition" haha, who knew?
this may not excite you, but to me, it was Christmas...skim milk in Japan! I've found the impossible!!
the stage for a Yagibushi singing contest...the finals from the competition I attended Friday afternoon
the Yagibushi band/singers' stage at the main intersection of the festival...there was a smaller version of this every block or so playing non-stop music from at least 7-10 every night, the crowd of people are all dancing
I couldn't get over how cute the little girls were in their yukata...mostly a combination of red, yellow and hot pink
haha...I love Japan for tshirts like this
my cell phone!
a local dance troupe in Sundays "Jumbo Parade"
teenaged girls walking the street barefoot, shoes in the plastic bag... I walked behind them a bit and realized they had been wearing the wooden platform shoes (geta) traditionally worn with yukata...very flat, very wooden, very blister inducing. (one of my favorite things about this weekend was seeing the young people out of their school uniforms and wearing their own style clothing. There was a lot of casual stuff similar to America, but I hear that there were a lot more teenagers in yukata this summer than in recent memory...the best were the girls wearing a super cute yukata, obi tied in a traditional knot, and untied converse all-star hightops...fantastic stuff)
the "mikoshi," a super heavy temple-type float that gets carried down the parade route by a group of hardworking people...usually the close of the parade
this is my Sunday yukata...I had no one to help me get dressed, so I took my obi off very carefully Saturday night and practiced re-tying it so that I could do it all by myself Sunday morning (and did a darn good job if I say so myself, little grandmas everywhere were impressed with my results!)
one of the dueling dragons in the parade..this one was host to a handful of my friends who are here teaching English with JET and other private programs. They had to run around in a big circle every block or so...it looked exhausting
more parade dancers...
a drum troupe performing in the parade
random float carrying a little Yagibushi band in Sunday's parade
the ribbons being worn by these men signify their positions in the local government...important folk (despite the silly pink pompom on their hats)
my friend Eri and I outside a restaurant where we ended the night on Saturday..Eri's mom and grandma came over to dress me in my yukata that night (this is my favorite one!)
a closer shot of one of the Yagibushi stages that I mentioned earlier...you can see a bit more of the band in this shot
the first performer in the Yagibushi singing concert that I attended on Friday afternoon at the City Performing Arts Center
one of my fellow JETs and I (in my Friday yukata) at the restaurant where my office welcoming party was held
from the time they started to put them up last week, these lanterns have been one of my favorite matsuri aesthetics
it doesn't look amazing, but this is the very first meal that I made for myself with all Japanese ingredients and I was quite proud (people take pictures of their food ALL the time here, so its not as weird as it may seem...)
this is the "hapi" coat provided for me by City Hall in the event that I didn't wear yukata...many groups, neighborhoods and companies have a hapi coat that everyone from their organization wears at the festival events
Friday after work we stumbled on the kindergarten parade, where all of the kindergartens were marching around with their little hats, hapi coats and mikoshi...too cute for words
some of the decorations lining the main street in Kiryu
one of the cuter things I saw all weekend...this group of moms and small children were all dressed in traditional clothing, sharing shaved ices and just being adorable (shaved ice is basically a snow cone, only smarter because its always in a plastic cup and never in a leaky paper cone)
a section of the first floor of a 3-4 story bicycle parking garage next to the Kiryu train station...its huge and completely full 
one of the signs near my apartment advertising for the festival... the amazing thing about all of these decorations is that they went up gradually over the course of last week, but when I rode my bike to work this morning there wasn't even a hint that signs like this were posted, that lanterns had lined a mile of city streets or that dozens of vendors had sold food on the streets for three days...
posted by Kris at
8:40 PM
1 Comments:
also, let's talk about you wearing geta (i'm pretty sure i see you in them in a picture or 2). how did you do it? also it all looks suuuuper fun. also glad you've got internet again. also, i've said also too many times.
By
byron, at 8/09/2005 12:40 AM
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