Nagoya Matsuri

 Japan, Photography, Travel  Comments Off on Nagoya Matsuri
Oct 162011
 

I took a bunch of photos for the parade, but there were so many that editing them will be a real chore. I’ll post them later. If you really want to see what the parade looks like, check out my 2007 Nagoya Matsuri Parade posts.

Since it rained like hell yesterday, all of the big parades for the Saturday portion of the Nagoya Matsuri were cancelled, and squashed into today.

The weather was perfect, too. So naturally, that meant that everyone was going to be crammed into the “best spots” for taking pictures and the like.

I tried to get there somewhat early, but my idea of early isn’t quite up to snuff when it comes to the idea of early here. (This is the “Land of the Rising Sun,” and I think some of the folks here take it to heart when it comes to these sorts of things.) My casual approach and my unfortunate height meant that I was in for it today.

As in 2007, the Kagura floats were fun to watch, but hard to take pictures of, because of my mortal enemy, the big floppy hats and prominent bald heads of the older segment of the population here. They had a knack for popping up at inopportune moments, but that’s just how it is here.

I’m tall, so people felt like they had some sort of mysterious privilege to just cut in front of me because they were short. What they didn’t realize is that they weren’t all that short, and wound up blocking my view, or screwing up my pictures.

More annoying than that were the security guards. Their job was to get in every other picture and screw it up. And when they weren’t doing that, they would just hassle people randomly for the sake of looking like they were doing their job, which is important when your job isn’t really all that necessary. It’s a parade in Japan, one of the safest countries in the world. It’s not like people are going to suddenly start acting up or anything. But they have to poke people and tell them not to stand there, or to move over, and so on and so forth. Because otherwise it doesn’t look like they’re doing their jobs, I guess.

Ugh.

But you just have to shrug it all off, or else you’ll go crazy and wind up getting arrested by the cop standing next to the security guard.

It’s just part of living here. Living here vs. other places is about making a set of trade-offs. If you want to live somewhere else, you have to make another set of trade-offs. You’re not going to find a tailored fit in an off-the-rack world. That goes for people and places.

Just like four years ago, I took way too many pictures. I’m pretty sure that editing them will be painful. (Note: It is. I’ve got it down from 500 to 98 photos.)

There were a few marching bands in the Flower Car Parade which followed, and one even had bagpipes. There were a few staged battles in the streets, and of course, Tokugawa Ieyasu ended things. The guy playing him was good, and said some funny things.

The Most Amazing Bus Station Ever

After the parade, I headed down to Oasis 21, which is a really fancy bus terminal, but it also has some open areas that were turned into an event stage and an area full of info booths from cities and prefectures from all over Central Japan.

First, I went to the rooftop area, a few floors above Oasis 21, which is a giant glass oval with a big fountain and pond in the center. It’s really interesting architecturally, and of course the views of the Sakae area of Nagoya are excellent.

Then I went down to the event area and looked around the booths, and talked to some people down there. That was a lot of fun. I got some information from the Aichi Prefecture people about some possible side trips, and some info from the Okazaki booth as well. There are so many cool places I’d love to go visit, but there’s only so much free time in my schedule, and frankly, only so much money in my budget.

Not to mention that some of these places are only reachable by car.

Travel in Japan can get expensive if you’re converting everything from dollars, and the exchange rate is only around 77 yen to the dollar. (And that’s on a good day.) It’s pretty painful.

After all of that, I grabbed my bag of pamphlets and headed back home. (Free clear file! And it has a strange local mascot character on it! Score!)

Oct 142007
 

I went back to Nagoya today, because even though I got sunburned, the festival was going to go on with or without me.

I rode my evil little bicycle to the station today, because even though it’s uncomfortable, it beats walking.

On the way to the station, I saw two guys riding on the same bike. Then I saw a police car pull them over, and 3 cops piled out to lecture and/or ticket them. Bad boys, bad boys… COPS: Okazaki!

After watching that action unfold, off to Nagoya I went.

Dashi and Kagura Parades

I managed to catch both the Dashi and Kagura float parades, and the childrens’ Mikoshi parade, as well as a parade for the sister cities, which I skipped. (Fast Fact: L.A. is a sister city to Nagoya.)

The Dashi are these giant floats on carts that have all sorts of bright decorations on them, and karakuri mechanical dolls on them that perform various little dances and act out plays.

Dashi Parade

They’re setting up the dashi floats now after wheeling them into the square.

Dashi Parade

Mid-performance!

Dashi Parade Special Effects

Special effects!

As impressive as the plays are the people who have to turn the Dashi floats, which have wheels that don’t turn.

These things are hard to turn.

More turning.

The Kagura floats are these floats that are basically drums with lots of gold ornamentation on them, and kids just beat the hell out of these drums with long sticks.

Kagura Parade 2

 

Kagura Parade

It’s loud.

The Children’s Parade

Then came the kids’ parade. That was mostly lots of cute mascot-y things, and weird things, like a lion-dance-like shinkansen (bullet train).

Children's Parade 9

And this rabbit-thing was cute:

Children's Parade 12

Then there was an appearance by the Nagoya Fire Board Marching Band, and their color guard, the Lily Angels. They were all very good.

Nagoya Fire Bureau Marching Band 7

Tubas!

Nagoya Fire Bureau Marching Band 6

The Lily Angels:

Nagoya Fire Bureau Marching Band 2

Nagoya Fire Bureau Marching Band 4

I saw some cars and mascots with people from sister cities, and started to get bored and decided to move on to the park.

After the Parades, Wandering Around Nagoya

As I was heading to the park, I saw a building that was called the Robot Museum, and I was intrigued.

Robot Museum 1

But apparently it had just shuttered its doors for good. Darn it.

Robot Museum 3

They even bagged up the exhibits.

Robot Museum 4

In the park there were a bunch of guys wearing 50s-style outfits, dancing. They even had the greased-back hair.

50's guys

50's guys 6

There were the usual festival stalls for stuff like taiyaki, takoyaki, and yakisoba, but I gave those a miss. (The guys are still dancing here.)

50's guys 8

I liked the fountain in the park.

Fountain

Fountain Statue

And you can see the Nagoya TV tower in the park as well:

Park in Nagoya, Broadcast Tower, etc.

On to Atsuta Shrine

Then it was time to head to Atsuta Shrine for a martial arts expo. Apparently they have mastered the art of hiding giant buildings by not putting up any signs near the respective subway stops. I saw signs for everything but the shrine coming out of the subway, so I wound up walking the wrong way for 10 minutes until I figured it out.

By the time I got there, I was fading, so I strolled around a bit, watched some Iaido, saw all the cute kids for shichi-go-san (a Shinto ceremony for kids aged 7, 5, and 3, hence the name shichi-go-san, which is Japanese for 7, 5, and 3) and I didn’t feel like taking pictures. The lighting was bad, and to be honest, I just didn’t feel like it.

I also skipped the omikuji (omikuji are paper fortune slips you can usually get at temples and shrines), because the I didn’t feel like jinxing myself when I’m not even one week into my trip.

I  headed back to Nagoya station, where I ate many tasty things (another chicken & egg sandwich and an iced cocoa, which were both delicious), then back home to ride the buttbuster 9000 back to the dorm.

Now I’ll do some laundry, some homework, and sleep.

Men’s Pocky Is Awesome

Oh, and I had a box of “Men’s Pocky” for dessert tonight. Don’t laugh. It’s awesome.

The chocolate is nice and dark, not too sweet, just the way I like it.

For those who don’t know, Pocky is a snack made of thin pretzel sticks covered with chocolate (and other things), and are laced with something akin to crack, because they are that addictive.

“Men’s Pocky” is made with a dark chocolate coating, because in Japan, manly men aren’t supposed to like sweet things. It’s, well, unmanly. Manly men should like bitter things.

So this is the candy for manly men… if manly men ate candy.

Unfortunately, they’re too busy eating rusty nails and the organs of weird creatures that taste like battery acid.

Because they’re manly!

I’m up to over 500 photos now, and it’s only been 4 days. I’m in trouble. Thinking of the photo editing alone makes me shudder.

Tomorrow is a rest/recovery day, with more classes. I don’t plan on doing much.

Thursday, I’m on my way to Kyoto to see some temples. I can’t wait for that. I’m going to hit all the highlights I can.

Oh, a postscript– I went to a drug store to pick up something for my sunburn, and to my great surprise, they sell topical prednisone cream over the counter. I found this out because I asked for something, and the pharmacist gave me some to use. (For those who don’t know, prednisone is a powerful steroid anti-inflammatory drug, usually only available by prescription in the U.S.) So now I have something else to get rid of before I leave Japan, I guess.

Remember– you can’t bring those sorts of things back to the U.S. without a prescription!

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