Spring? Festivals

With summer in Japan inevitably come festivals. Now there are of course spring events and festivals ( お花見 flower viewing and かなまら祭り kanamara festival) but you don't hear much about the festivals until summer. The summer festival is a time for food stalls that sell chocolate dipped bananas and fried squid on a stick, for kids games for $4 each, and, for everybody over the age of 14, it is possibly the only time where people think wandering around wearing yukata (informal/ligher-weight-for-summer kimono) is okay. Personally that's my favorite part. Though the fresh made yakisoba is a close second.

So last week when I started seeing posters up in the train stations around here (there are 3 within walking distance) I got a little excited. So I had some extra time today after my traditional dance class was over and I headed toward the festival. I guess it isn't summer-ish enough for the yukatas to come out yet at the end of April, though we're supposed to be in the 70's all next week. Unfortunately my phone died just as I was getting there so the picture below is one I found on the internet. Sorry! But this is what the flowers did look like today.


As I was leaving the festival and contemplating whether or not to buy the aforementioned yakisoba, I picked up a mother's day present for my mom, a green handkerchief with turtles on it because she likes turtles so much, and headed home. Only to find that the street was blocked so the parade could go through. More than the flowers, I really wanted to take pictures of the parade. It was about 80 old ladies and several, not many, old men doing some traditional dance as they moved at a snail's pace down the road. It was really funny because at the end of each repeat of the dance they all yelled, "Sore sore sore! Yatta sore!" which may have a traditional value, have something to do with the so-badly-recorded-you-can't-understand song that was playing, or could mean, "There, there, there! Yay over there!" There was this one lady who was really into it and yelling way louder than anyone else in the whole group, and was just smiling like nobody's business.

So if you ever show up in central Tokyo in late April, the Tsutsuji Matsuri is something worth spending a couple hours on before you move on to your regularly scheduled activities.