7.30.2008

Gion Matsuri



July 1 -31 was Gion Matsuri.

Since the 14Th you could see the girls walking down Kawaramachi and Shijo street wearing their Yukatas, hanging out with their friends or their boyfriends. There are speakers all over shijo, kawaramachi and terramachi streets, they play a melody called "Kon-chiki-chin" non stop to signal the coming of the festival, this melody is later played by musicians on the floats that parade the city.

Everyday the number of people wearing Yukatas increase more and more, and also the amount of tourists gets really crazy, walking to work was very difficult with the streets and the trains being sooooo crowded.
In the afternoon shijo street was closed to the traffic so that people could walk freely to see the floats and take pics and buy things from the hundreds of street vendors that set up shop in this festival. The photo bellow is the intersection of kawaramachi and shijo street you can see the big Hankyu Building on the corner, seeing so many people walking around was surreal.



On Gion Matsuri about 32 Floats are put together using only wood and no glue or nails to hold them together, the floats are massive and they carry musicians, lanterns and very old Persian rugs which are displayed for people to see, you can see musicians in white and blue tops sitting on the inside of one of the floats on this pic, you can see the rugs on the lower part of the float:


It was very interesting to see the stuff you can buy on matsuris and also the crowd was a bit scary but all around a very cool matsuri, if you come to Kyoto in July don't miss the matsuri you'll miss out on a great event.

Here are someimages from the street vendors and floats from the matsuri, enjoy:



Mata ne!

7.08.2008

Tanabata

Yesterday was Tanabata day( the star festival), there were bamboo branches decorated with colored paper everywhere, in stores and family houses, apartments , everybody was displaying their decorated bamboo branches.

You are supposed to write a wish on a piece of paper and hang it on the bamboo branch and after tanabata this branch is burned with the paper ornaments and wishes, this is said to make the wishes go up to the Deitys and then they will make your wish come true.

To me it looked a lot like a summer kinda Xmas, you have a branch that is placed much like a pine tree, and then its decorated with paper ornaments and streamers anything you like as long as its paper and kids have a lot of fun putting these up so taking the presents and Santa out of the picture it is very similar, at least to me it is


Jya ne.