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For your viewing pleasure: Kuwana's Ishi Dori Matsuri! AKA the noisiest festival in Japan. Kuwana is usually very quiet, but for three nights a year, this sleepy little suburban town erupts in frenzy of taiko drumming, drunken debauchery, and all-night shenanigans. For this special occasion, Ruth, Jen, Jenny, and I donned our brand-spanking new yukatas and painted the town red!


Jen playing with nori-ame, which is kind of like a melted lollipop.


Ruth and Tom try their hand at catching goldfish.


Me and Tom after a successful fishing stint.


Jenny rocks out taiko-style!


The story behind the Ishi Dori Matsuri is that each district of Kuwana has a special custom-made float decorated with paper lanterns bearing the chinese symbol of the district. Each float is pulled by a number of the residents wearing special festival clothes marked with symbols representing the various districts.




The floats each have a giant taiko drum and are accompanied by several suri-gane (gong-like instruments). Every district has its own unique drum beat. When you consider that there are nearly 100 floats all banging away at the same time, it can get pretty loud. They kept me up until 4 in the morning the first night.




All of the floats are then brought one by one to the main shrine in central Kuwana.


The whole town gets in on the festivities. I saw people starting on the sake at 10 in the morning all three days. There's nothing quite like bonding over greasy festival food and alcohol.






And finally, the obligatory highly-photoshopped artsy-fartsy pic:


If you missed the fun this year, I definitely want to go again next year, so let me know! First weekend of August for Japan's noisiest--and most fun--festival!

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Currently playing: Green Day - 409 in Your Coffeemaker

posted by Grace @ 8/22/2004 11:13:00 PM