Matsuri--preparing for summer

Today I went to one of the biggest Matsuri in Tokyo (Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa) with Marie. While it was crowded, it was not quite as crowded as it could have been. It dates all the way back to the Edo period.

A matsuri is a festival usually held at Buddhist temples and shinto shrines in Japan. They are very popular in summer. Almost every temple and shrine has their own matsuri weekend. The streets and walkways around the temple or shrine fill with booths and vendors. Most of them sell food (mmmm), toys, or have games for children, though we saw plenty of adults playing today as well. The games all seem to center around scooping something moving out of a pool of water or scooping something out of a pool of moving water. "Something" can be goldfish, baby turtles, and tadpoles (the latter two Marie and I felt very sorry for as they didn't seem too happy) or it can be plastic toys, super balls, or balloons with air and toys inside. I definitely want to try one of these games sometime this summer.

Before we even made it to the temple, we ran into one of the mikoshi processions. The mikoshi is the vehicle (a highly decorated platform with long poles for many people to hold while they walk) for travelling version of a nearby shrine. They shake the mikoshi a lot, because it is said that the harder they shake, the more happiness falls out for the people. It's like a fantastic dance the way the mikoshi's supporters jump and walk and turn and move.

Marie first bought a rice cracker, and then we hit the main street leading up to the temple. We have both been to Asakusa many times and so we mostly ignored the permanent shops that we'd browsed through many times before and headed to the booths set up especially for the festival. I bought a big snow cone where you could put on your own syrups. I got melon and strawberry. (First we watched a young girl make hers.) Marie thought that snow cones were a strange idea, after all they are ice and sugar water. She'd never seen one before except on Lilo and Stitch.

We watched lots of people trying to catch goldfish in a paper nets (this is a little difficult because if the paper gets too wet and if the goldfish panics too much, your net will rip, and then your turn is up. The idea is to get as many of them into your floating bowl with water as you can before your net rips. Then you get to take those fish home. (Yep in a plastic bag just like the sort of similar games in the states!)

We wandered around and looked at the food. I decided I wanted to get some yakisoba (fried noodles with vegetables) after I finished my snow cone. Marie got some chocolate-covered sponge cake and then I bought my yakisoba. Next Marie had her eye on some soft serve ice cream (soft cream here). But in the meantime, we sat near the temple and people-watched while I ate my yummy fried noodles. There were these incredibly cute kids hamming it up for some people taking pictures and the audience sitting around on the side of the temple.

That's when we noticed the storm clouds moving in.

What had been a really bright day turned cloudy quickly. They made a couple of announcements about the impending storm. Then the rain started to fall, interrupting my attempt to take a nice picture of a couple of girls in yukatas (summer cotton kimonos). We hid under an awning for a little while during most of the wind and a lot of the rain. After awhile Marie and I got tired of waiting and so we decided to walk in the much calmed rain (we'd both forgotten umbrellas) to the station. Just after we stepped out from under the awning, Marie spotted a couple of nice looking Japanese guys with an umbrella each and asked if they didn't mind if we walked along with them under their umbrellas. I thought she was a bit crazy, but they were happy to help. And I had a fairly successful (and simple) conversation in Japanese with a stranger, which was more exicting than it sounds.

From Asakusa, Marie and I headed to Omote-Sando/Harajuku. It was time to look for tabi socks for Marie, and I wanted to look for a yukata. After taking some good clearing weather pictures, and then walked towards the second hand store where she has shopped before for traditional Japanese clothes. On the way we stopped at a toy store that had LEGOS! (no joke) and a bunch of cute Japanese characers, as well as some internationally known ones like Mickey and Wallace and Gromit. I bought some stickers, a bunch of cool postcards, and a couple of hair-sticks. Then on to the second hand store, where Marie found her tabi, and I bought a yukata! The next step is buying two more belts for it and learning how to properly wear it.



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