Waking up at 8am on Day 2, I had no idea how difficult the day was to be. I had heard that I was going to be carrying the children’s mikoshi. I had seen it, it looked much smaller than the regular mikoshi that I had carried the day before.
Just like I had thought, it was a lot lighter, maybe 100 kilograms instead of the 800 kilograms of the regular mikoshi. Everyone gathers at 8am in front of the children’s mikoshi. We take a shot of Japanese sake before we begin. As we are drinking our shot I notice some ropes tied to the front of mikoshi. Puzzled I’m not sure what they are for, but I’ll find out soon enough I think.
My friend directs me to the front of the children’s mikoshi and lifts up the rope. We are supposed to use these ropes to help the children carry the mikoshi. This makes sense because there are only a few junior high students and the rest are 4 or 5 years old, nowhere old or strong enough to carry one of these bad boys by themselves.
My naivety led me to believe that these ropes would make carrying this thing simple. I soon discovered the exact opposite was true. They weren’t long enough to allow us to comfortably carry it with our shoulder and have to carry with mainly our forearm.
We manage to survive our 2 or 3 hours of children’s mikoshi with a few hours to spare before the yattai. Yattai is like a small car with some taiko on them and long ropes in front. The entire neighborhood pitches in and pulls this cart around town for the next 8 hours or so.
All of the neighborhoods in the area pull their yattai to a meeting place next to the ocean and play a song songs and rest for a while. Talking with the locals, I discovered that this part of the festival is for asking God that the town receive a good catch this summer fishing.
As the yattai start to head on the 5 hour path home, I notice something I hadn’t seen last year. People dressed crazily. Not traditional Japanese “crazy”, but crazy crazy.
I had missed this part last year, but discovered that my friend’s neighborhood has a tradition of having people cross-dress or dressing crazily for most of Day 2. A fun way to enjoy the festive spirit indeed!
Maybe next year I will partake in this part of the festivities, I am still undecided.
We slowly made our way back to our neighborhood. Pulling yattai, listening to taiko, and generally just relaxing. I also got to really use my camera all night long and learn a lot more about night photography – sans-flash.
Boy playing Flute
Woman playing Taiko
Matsuri really are a great. A perfect chance to let your hair down, enjoy the company of your neighbors, meet old friends, and make new friends.
I’ve posted all of my photographs from the Matsuri in Flickr in my Chikura Matsuri 2010 set.