despite what you now might think from reading the title this is not about me going partying in Osaka. Today I would like to write about two festivals (祭り) that have a very long tradition. They are both held every year on the 22nd of October.
The first one is Jidai Matsuri (時代祭り) which literally means the festival of the ages. The first Jidai Matsuri was held in 1895 as a celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the founding of Heian (the former name of Kyoto) by Emperor Kammu. It is a five hour long procession from the Imperial Palace to the Heian Shrine (平安神宮) in which about 2000 performers, dress up in costumes of the different periods in Japan, participate. I went with a group of friends from my school and we watched the procession walk by. This took about one and a half hours, and to be honest wasn't as exciting as I hoped it would be. One problems was probably the rain, that started and wouldn't stop, it would get stronger and lighter but kept pouring. The other thing was, that we didn't have enough information. There were some announcements in Japanese explaining the characters and their clothing, but we couldn't hear it very well and it was very hard to follow. Nevertheless I took some very nice pictures and a little video so you can get an impression.
The second festival we went to was Kurama Hi Maturi (鞍馬火祭り) which is celebrated in a small town north of Kyoto called Kurama. We arrived at around 5 and so had time so look around this beautiful little town in daylight. It is very traditional with wooden houses along a narrow street ringed by mountains and woods. The atmosphere was really great and I will try to come back another day just to look around and go the the onsen there. At 6:00 in the evening the town was lit up with torches carried by children. Soon after that the local people parade through the streets carrying a great torch and yelling along the way until they gather at the shrine at around 8 o'clock. It is a fantastic sight, but the festival is so famous now, that there are just way too many people to really enjoy it. Hundredth of policemen and volunteers are in attendance to get all visitors to walk a pre organized path through the town. We watched the spectacle for two hours and then decided to leave. It took us almost 30 minutes to get back to the station, a distance of about 500 meters at the most.
Most interesting were the costumes of the male participants. They were wearing not much more than a thong.
Here you can see the traditional clothing :-P
Newspaper article about the festival
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