Yatai!

What: The Takayam Spring Festival (Sanno Festival)
When: April 15 & 16
Info: This is called one of the three most beautiful festivals in Japan. It is held twice a year, once to wish for a good crop (spring) and then to thank the gods for the harvest (autumn). According to the brochure, the festival began in the 1690's and the yatai (floats) were introduced in the 1700's.

Takayama is located in the Japan Alps so spring comes a little bit later. The sakura were blooming, especially in Gero. For once my camera co-operated with me and took some decent train-window shots.

We arrived on Sunday, the second (and last) day of the festival and made our way downtown area to check out the floats.

Elspeth and I had seen the floats at the festival museum the last time we came to Takayama but it was so much cooler to see them out in the sun. Twelve yatai were spread out throughout town but the three involved in the marionette performance were in a square near the famous nakabashi bridge.


Check out the samurai outfits! I remember hearing at the museum that each household has one samurai outfit and that Takayama is one of the only places where they are still worn for festivals!

These were my favourite outfits - they helped carry the portable shrine through the streets.

The floats are worth a lot of money (a couple million dollars per float!) and they are so important that if they are damaged, the Japanese Government will pay to fix them!


With the yatai out around town, their storehouses (yatai-gura) were empty and the huge doors were left open. This one had a small shrine near the top.









The festival procession going across Nakabashi in Takayama (below). Children, also dressed in costumes played flutes and small gongs (the brochure describes their song as 'kan-kako-kan' and that actually sounds exactly like the gongs!)



Later in the afternoon, everyone gathered in the burning hot square to see the marionette/puppet show. Even though the sun burnt our faces and there were a few technical difficulties (sound), it was still really interesting to see the performances.

Each puppet is manipulated by the puppet masters (!) who are hidden inside the float. The puppets are controlled by dozens of strings that are strung through the projecting arm.They can even pick objects up, walk up stairs, put on masks or do flips.


We had heard about the scandalous marionette performance involving the puppet of a courtly lady who suddenly turns into a tiger. This particular performance had been banned for hundreds of years and only returned to the festival in the 80's! (as a tiger - below)

The courtly lady (below)


The really awesome mirror-image drum and flute float (Kaguratai) (below).

We walked around for a bit but came back to the floats just as they were being put back into their storehouses until next year. This was the highlight for me because we got to see the teams of people pulling/pushing and steering the floats!

The streets of Takayama are narrow and require sharp turns to get down. The float makers took this into account and devised a brilliant fifth wheel mechanism that makes turning a corner quick and relatively painless.







This little girl (above) was my favourite. I had seen her dancing to the music earlier and then saw her again watching the kid-flute-band. I loved her yukata/sneaker/ponytail style.

Helping dad pull the float (above)



That night we stayed at the posh Takayama Green Hotel. It has an onsen, a foot onsen, 3 restaurants, a Japanese garden and a shopping center. The food was delicious and very spring festival inspired.


And of course, when in Takayama you must eat as much Hida beef as you can. Here we got to grill the meat ourselves.

Our garden view table (below)(Unfortunately our waiter couldn't take a picture that was infocus)

After mulitple visits to the onsen, a good nights sleep and a weird 'American' buffet breakfast we headed back into town to the morning market. Being the rain goddess, I summoned the rain to Takayama.



Goodbye yatai!

Hida Kokubun-ji - 8th century temple (below)

1200 year old gingko tree (below). My brain can't quite take in how old this tree is...


I am so glad we went to this festival. Unfortunately the autumn festival is during the week or I'd go to it too. I love Takayama with its mountains, floats, beef, onsens, sembei, shopping, mitarashi dango, late sakura, bridges and little lime green tree birds!