As with any festival, the food was plentiful. The afternoon pretty much began by having some "mochi" or rice cakes. It's called "cakes" but it's actually not sweet at all. Think of rice being boiled to the point of being in some sort of jell-o texture, garnished with soy sauce and served inside a piece of seaweed paper. This was one of the food areas.
We checked out some Japanese swordfighting after that (called "iaido"). It was interesting but definitely not exciting. Here's a picture from the early stages when they were still using pieces of wood that were picked up in Japan thousands of years ago.
Check out the white dude near the front of the picture. I don't really know why, but I always find it weird to see caucasians taking part in very traditional martial arts (yeah, I'm a horrible person). The guy right to the left of him kicked ass though, he had tatoos all over his neck and arms and was really agile with the katana. It would've been awesome to see the two fight to the death!
Before leaving we saw a group of people raise a "mikoshi" (a small portable shrine).
The idea is that everyone gets really excited (with two people standing on top of the mikoshi to cheer them on) and then they parade around holding the thing on their shoulders. It looked like it was really fun, next time I'll have to try lending a helping hand. Kind of afraid to break my back though, I wouldn't have it as easy as some of the shorter folk (check out two of the girls near the back).
Peace out.
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