For the past couple days Obu has been preparing for its summer festival. Lanterns were hung along the streets and two days ago they started constructing a stage right outside of the train station. Yesterday was the festival. Unfortunately because it was Saturday I had to work. Fortunately, I finish on Saturdays at 8pm so I was out of the office by 9pm and could enjoy about 1/2 hour of the festivities before it ended.
Obu appears to be a pretty small town. Don't be fooled by its many cell phone stores on every corner or multiple English language schools. It seems to be a place to which people commute for work or in order to get somewhere else. So, it was nice to see a small city's summer festival compared to the insanity of Toyota. Tons of kids were out and about, dressed in their bright summer yukutas. Parents were buying kids an assortment of glowing bracelets and wands and the most annoying toy of all time - a plastic bird that you fill part way with water and then blow in to make it chirp (I remember having one of these as a kid but these new fancy schmancy versions glow and flash). I'm positive every parent was regretting having bought one, later that night.
The cool thing abou the Obu festival was that I got to see some dancing. On the stage a group of older women lead the dancing and around the base of the stage people danced along with them. Mateo and I grabbed some green tea ice cream and watched them until the dancing ended.
4 comments:
Ha! Beat all your friends for the first comment! This festival in retrospect was more remarkable than the universal tradition of setting fireworks that was Toyota Oiden, but obviously... this particular brand of matsuri is exclusively Japan. It was like traditional meets neighborhood block party! I love how it's so easy to access different nodes along the oh-so-many train routes to count! This way we're guaranteed a new show after show after show. This merry night, to Anjyo we go!
I don't think you should be jealous of any of us, Aaron, since pretty soon, you'll be there experiencing everything that gets brogged about firsthand!
With all these festivals, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about your weekends being boring!
Is ice cream a big thing in Japan? I would have thought that since most Asian cultures seem to steer clear of dairy that they would have other frozen desserts that they turned to instead.
Ice cream is huge here. They have every flavour and colour. They also have ices/sorbet things that are amazing. Last night i had a 'coffee float' - a cup of coffee flavoured ice with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream in the centre. So good.
Just add that to the list of food things I must stuff my face with when I visit!
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