Kashiwazaki Hannabi 2010

Well, in Japan at the moment is a pretty horrible heatwave. I was joined by my mate from England, Ian, and we had a very hot and sweaty week in Tokyo. However, it was a lot of fun, and we discovered something very interesting. For anyone visiting Tokyo in July (take an ice pack), a good thing to do is to head to Disney the day after the public vacation on July 19th. That is when many people head to Disney, and then soon after, the schools close. This means, in between, Disney is quiet! My friend and I headed down on the 20th, and it was dead! Well, as dead as Tokyo Disney can be!

However, what I really wanted my friend to see was Kashiwazaki's Gion festival. 3 days of dancing, omikoshi, and fun!

The first day sees many of the local schools despatch their marching bands for a demonstration. However, the community fun begins in the evening, when many of the community groups join in a mass dance parade thing which processes round the streets of Kashiwazaki. School groups, kids groups, sports teams, companies, and district teams.

There are 3 different types of dance which everyone joins in all at once. To start with, a relatively simple one, which I can do. Unfortunately, there are another two, which are fiendishly complicated, and I cant!

Day 1

So, first of all, a few shots from the community dance thing!

The common costume was the Yukata. Kind of looks like a kimono, without consisting of huge quantities of silk! There is also a traditional hat to be worn!

Local employers will sponsor groups of employees to enter. These guys wearing the natty yellow and white yukata are all employees of TEPCO, the guys running the power station near by. Not so easy to see here, but the red symbol on the shoulder is the corporate logo!

Local sports groups will also take part. The baseball club...

And a local girls volleyball team!

Just because this has quite a long history, does not mean you have to be traditional and formal. If you want, you can always slap on a set of bunny ears! Another nice touch was that quite a few of the kids groups added extra twist steps or jumps in the dance routine! All in all, a lot of fun!

Day 2

On the Sunday, we see the omikoshi of Kashiwazaki being dusted off from various shrines round Kashiwazaki and hauled out to be carried with pride and waved around! These will be joined by other symbols of good luck, which consist of big piles of sake barrels (sorry! Empty!) which usually have a couple of cute local girls hanging off. Their job is to exort the carriers of the sake to greater efforts. Interestingly, when the girls are up there, they drop a shoulder of the happi jacket off at least one of their shoulder. Thus exposing naked flesh! A big thing in Japan! Some go so far as to show off 2 shoulders! Shock!

Amongst all this are the kids groups. Some carry their own omikoshi, others pull a community float, etc. In all, you have hundreds of groups displaying something and lots of dancing, and noise, and music, and good-natured chaos!

It is worth noting, the omikoshi are carried by residents of the community in which the shrine is placed. This means that some guys (its usually guys. Sorry girls! I have seen some girls carry the thing, but only the tall ones! Shorter ladies just take up space without actually being able to balance it on their shoulder!) end up carrying the thing over many years. This results in them developing a weird looking growth of fluid, scar tissue, and padded skin growing on one shoulder!

And again, some more pics for your delectation! 

First of all, a pile of empty sake barrels. Sake is important in Japan. You want to bless something? Break open a barrel of Sake! Can think of worse ways!

A bunch of kids carrying an omikoshi! Though the adults are on hand to help out! These things are heavy, expensive, and there is no glue involved!

The Sunset Riders, a local line dancing group linked up with a kids yosakoi group to dance round the whole thing!

These girls come from the best yosakoi group in Kashiwazaki. Truly amazing! They work really hard, and hold down day jobs!

Possibly the largest omikoshi in the parade that I got to see.

Every year, local communities will create their own float! Stitch usually makes an appearance. HE is a hugely popular character in Japan!

Even Paul the World Cup squid made an appearance!

A whale. Complete with working blowhole, and it blows bubbles. As whales tend to do...

I like this one. A bunch of kids hauling an omikoshi made out of recycled plastic bottles!

Dont ask. I have no idea who he is. All I know, is that this guy is scary!

Day 3

Finally, moving on to the last day. Stupidly, I agreed to wake up early on the Monday morning in order to help out a mate of mine head to the beach with a huge blue sheet to try to reserve a spot. This was something of an experience. 

Heading to the beach at 6:30 in the morning, we ended up joining a reasonable queue to wait for the city to open the beach. Once they did, cue the huge scramble to bag the best spots. Luckily for us, we managed to reserve something in one of the prime locations! So quite happy about that!

Anyhoo. Once the sheet was down, it was back to the apartment to finish off my sleep. Then, later, we headed in to do a bit of shopping, loading up on snacks and drinks, and headed back to the beach for one of the biggest shows Kashiwazaki has laid on! This year saw the inclusion of not one, but two Phoenix fireworks. These are the biggest in the world, and get to be transported on their own truck. And made in Niigata, too!

There has been plenty of other neat stuff, too. The local fisherman community sponsor a nice line of fish-shaped fireworks, TEPCO had some very lovely chains suspended on parachutes, and the finale was as spectacular as always. I am also including some videos, which do feature a little bit of shouting. In my defence, when I made these, I was a little drunk...

If you look, you can see fish! Unfortunately, I went to get some yakisoba, so missed the start, and sprinted back to get my camera. Which then decided to think for me and slow down! Aargh! This is the best of the few I managed to get!

This may not look so spectacular, but these are actually strings of red and green firework lights suspended on parachutes. They took forever to drift down, and where really impressive! These where released just after a whole bunch of large golden fireworks, and where left in the aftermath. These came from TEPCO, running the power station. Just trying to be a good neighbour!

The last of the pictures. From here, its videos. These two are the Phoenix fireworks. Really big! After this, the displays saw the fireworks come thick and fast, so I switched to video.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these pics and videos. And I hope that any of you that read this who live in Japan, please, think about heading to Kashiwazaki. It is a small town. But we do have excellent seafood, some great little bars, some nice parks, amazing scenery surrounding us, the best rice (and sake) in Japan, and one heck of a 3 day festival, with a breathtaking finale!