Spring Festivals

I've been a total slacker about my blog this spring. Sorry! It's basically been a fairly normal spring, but there have been a few adventures. In order to not make this the world's longest post, I've decided to split it into two. Today, you get to hear about the festivals I went to.


In early March, I went on a kimono tour. The Nakai neighborhood in Tokyo has a long history - going back to the 1600s - associated with the dying of cloth for kimonos. In March, there was a sort of festival where the canal was filled with banners of dyed fabric. Unfortunately for me, the day I went was rainy, they couldn't hang the silk cloth - only the cotton - and so the canal wasn't full of the colorful banners. But it was still interesting.

In addition to the canal, shops all over the neighborhood hung banners outside.

And there was an exhibition that showed kimonos and banners made from silk painted by masters.

Some of the most expensive of these kimonos are made from silk that was hand woven. The hanging below shows the 38 different steps that go into creating the final design in the bottom right corner. It kind of explains why some of these kimonos cost about the same as a house.

In early April, I went to two festivals. The first was a fertility festival called Kanamara Matsuri (aka, the Festival of the Iron Phallus). Apparently, this festival sprang from the fact that, back in the Edo period, the ladies of the night would go to this shrine to pray for protection. Eventually, the festival came to celebrate fertility, protection in childbirth, and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. 

In an effort to try to keep this family friendly, I'm only including a couple pictures. The main part of the festival is when transvestites (or simply men dressed as women, depending on which website you look at) carry the portable shrine shaped like a giant pink phallus around the neighborhood. What I do not understand is why this shrine is named Elizabeth. Seriously. It's the Elizabeth Mikoshi. I don't understand.

Everything revolves around fertility. The shrine's wood plaques that people write their hopes and prayers on. The candies (both male and female). Everything. This festival seemed to be equal parts young Japanese going crazy, foreigners wanting to see this amazing spectacle, and Japanese grandparents in kimonos enjoying the festival. So now I've seen a Japanese grandmother licking a large (maybe 6 inches) candy (ref note on shape above). It was an experience!

The following weekend, I went to Narita (the town, not the airport) to see the taiko festival. I love taiko. And I love that Japan loves cute things, and so the banner for the festival was an airplane (for the international airport) holding taiko sticks.

Because I was participating in an exhibition on the embassy compound to demonstrate my very limited nihon jujutsu skills, I was only able to go to the concert at the shrine, which was the main event of the festival. The shrine had actually been on my to-see list, as I'd heard it was very nice. And it was! 

One of the gates of the shrine.

And of course, the taiko performance was excellent and very dramatic, performed on the steps of the shrine as the sun set.

The following week, I participated in the IMAF 36th Annual Martial Arts Exhibition to help demonstrate nihon jujutsu. While I wasn't perfect, I didn't humiliate myself in demonstrating the basic moves, so that was a positive. And one of the girls who was there saw it and has joined our class, so that's cool!

So those are all of my festivals/events of the spring. Next post - flowers!