Nara - Day 2 Part 2 - Kasuga Wakamiya Onmatsuri
Okay. Now for the final part of the procession for the Onmatsuri festival along with some photos of the food stands.
I'm home now back with my parents. I left Nara a bit after noon, made my way to Kyoto. Had lunch. Bought some gifts. Then it was another bullet train ride to Tokyo, then a train to Funabashi, and then another train from there to my parent's station in Katsutadai, then a cab to the apartment. Got home at 6pm. Yup. A good 6 hours after I started to head back from Nara. Long day...
BUT, I wanted to get this posted before I go to bed so I went through and you get the last 26(!) photographs!
Needless to say, all of this will be behind the cut except the first one and even though these are resized, they are not c ompressed as much to keep the quality as high as possible so, even with broadband, it might take a little bit to load. I thought about splitting this into 2 posts but...nah. You get the whole thing. It's like getting more for the same price of one post! Right? No? Anyway, off we go.
I realized the last part of this is mostly kids. So to start off, here's a few boys dressed up as young warriors including the swords and everything though I think the one on the left is getting a bit tired of the walk in unpadded sandals. He'll look back on this with fond memories some day. Well...or so we hope.
We'll get through the adults first. We'll start off with this very impressive costume. A shogun in full armor. Though I hope for the guy's sake that it's fake and not really as heavy as the real things were. There were about 4 other guys behind him and oddly they were getting older the further back...I didn't post the other guys but...I think the armor was, replica or not, heavy enough for these guys... (-_-)
Of course, just like the other post, there were guys in traditonal court dress as well. The second guy must have known the person standing a few feet to the left of me since he actually stoped to pose and say hi to one of the spectators.
Next up we have a procession of guards starting off with a bunch of them carrying a good number of impossibly huuuuuuge obviously ceremonial katanas.
Right after them were the spearmen and the pikemen.
We also had a bunch of guys and one woman do a ceremonial showing of balance and strength with very large poles topped with various items including spear heads and even this one that looks like just a giant weight. I don't know how heavy it really is but it can't be light...and it has to be hard to balance.
But then the cool part was, he actually tossed this to the woman and not only did she catch it but she continued with the ceremony. It was pretty cool, especially indicated by the kids and their moms all looking on in awe :)
The guards, or at least the pikemen, then lined up along the parade line as if to protect the next group coming up from us.
And here comes the special young shrine maidens that I posted being carried on the back of her handlers going the other way yesterday.
Of course, like I said, there were lots of kids participating in this too. Including these kids who did a variation of the same ceremony as the adults but using kid sized props. I was impressed by the little girl in the 3rd photo since she carried a big unweildly ceremonial staff as if it was no big deal (^_^)
And the star ceremony of the day was the "Yabusame". Basically it's the ceremonial show of shooting a target with a bow and arrow from the back of a horse. There are some famous yabusame presentations where guys going at full gallop will actually hit targets with a real bow and arrow. However, for the Onmatsuri, this role is given to 4 or 5 young boys such as this one.
The horse is stationary the arrow is blunt tipped. But the boy and arrow itself is real enough and he IS on a back of a horse. They all hit the target though and did a good job, each hit on the target being followed by enthusaistic clapps from the audience. Here is a series of 3 shots taken of one of the boys hitting the target. The 3+ shots per second on my camera came in handy!
This ends the photographs from the parade. Of course, this is a festival and no fesitval is complete without a whole bunch of "yatai" or food and game stands. And they came out en masse!! There is a lake right outside of Nara park called Sarusawa Ike and the stands circled the entire lake 2 deep! Did I meantion that by the time I got there it was raining pretty hard? It was... I seriously had to think about whether to pull my camera out or not... But for the sake of my readers, I juggled my umbrella and my camera and got some shots! I know yhou all appreciate this. :)
Nothing like food and game stands (where you can win very detailed replicas of actual guns that shoot BB's...and they are so realistic that they are actually illegal in the US...but the kids here LOVE them) under the shadow (figuratively speaking) of the ancient temples and pagodas.
After all, all kids want some chicken on a stick (yakitori).
And to finish this post off, a photo of a staple of these types of food stands at festivals...Squid on a Stick!!! Mmmmmmmm. This place had a number of "cuts". You could buy the whole body on a stick, only half a body on a stick , or the legs (2 per order) on a stick. I had the legs. It was brushed with a soy based sauce, grilled until you get a light char, and it was sooooooo good. Chewy yet tender and very tasty. Yum.
That does it for this post. I hope you all enjoyed this photo tour or a very old and traditonal festival that I was lucky enough to see. The weather sucked. It was freezing. I was wet. But it was still a pretty memorable event.
I took more photos and such today and there are some more photos from the other days that I haven't gotten to yet including some ceremony for the same festival that I managed to catch at the end of the first day. Those will be uploaded soon!
(^_^)
I'm home now back with my parents. I left Nara a bit after noon, made my way to Kyoto. Had lunch. Bought some gifts. Then it was another bullet train ride to Tokyo, then a train to Funabashi, and then another train from there to my parent's station in Katsutadai, then a cab to the apartment. Got home at 6pm. Yup. A good 6 hours after I started to head back from Nara. Long day...
BUT, I wanted to get this posted before I go to bed so I went through and you get the last 26(!) photographs!
Needless to say, all of this will be behind the cut except the first one and even though these are resized, they are not c ompressed as much to keep the quality as high as possible so, even with broadband, it might take a little bit to load. I thought about splitting this into 2 posts but...nah. You get the whole thing. It's like getting more for the same price of one post! Right? No? Anyway, off we go.
I realized the last part of this is mostly kids. So to start off, here's a few boys dressed up as young warriors including the swords and everything though I think the one on the left is getting a bit tired of the walk in unpadded sandals. He'll look back on this with fond memories some day. Well...or so we hope.
We'll get through the adults first. We'll start off with this very impressive costume. A shogun in full armor. Though I hope for the guy's sake that it's fake and not really as heavy as the real things were. There were about 4 other guys behind him and oddly they were getting older the further back...I didn't post the other guys but...I think the armor was, replica or not, heavy enough for these guys... (-_-)
Of course, just like the other post, there were guys in traditonal court dress as well. The second guy must have known the person standing a few feet to the left of me since he actually stoped to pose and say hi to one of the spectators.
Next up we have a procession of guards starting off with a bunch of them carrying a good number of impossibly huuuuuuge obviously ceremonial katanas.
Right after them were the spearmen and the pikemen.
We also had a bunch of guys and one woman do a ceremonial showing of balance and strength with very large poles topped with various items including spear heads and even this one that looks like just a giant weight. I don't know how heavy it really is but it can't be light...and it has to be hard to balance.
But then the cool part was, he actually tossed this to the woman and not only did she catch it but she continued with the ceremony. It was pretty cool, especially indicated by the kids and their moms all looking on in awe :)
The guards, or at least the pikemen, then lined up along the parade line as if to protect the next group coming up from us.
And here comes the special young shrine maidens that I posted being carried on the back of her handlers going the other way yesterday.
Of course, like I said, there were lots of kids participating in this too. Including these kids who did a variation of the same ceremony as the adults but using kid sized props. I was impressed by the little girl in the 3rd photo since she carried a big unweildly ceremonial staff as if it was no big deal (^_^)
And the star ceremony of the day was the "Yabusame". Basically it's the ceremonial show of shooting a target with a bow and arrow from the back of a horse. There are some famous yabusame presentations where guys going at full gallop will actually hit targets with a real bow and arrow. However, for the Onmatsuri, this role is given to 4 or 5 young boys such as this one.
The horse is stationary the arrow is blunt tipped. But the boy and arrow itself is real enough and he IS on a back of a horse. They all hit the target though and did a good job, each hit on the target being followed by enthusaistic clapps from the audience. Here is a series of 3 shots taken of one of the boys hitting the target. The 3+ shots per second on my camera came in handy!
This ends the photographs from the parade. Of course, this is a festival and no fesitval is complete without a whole bunch of "yatai" or food and game stands. And they came out en masse!! There is a lake right outside of Nara park called Sarusawa Ike and the stands circled the entire lake 2 deep! Did I meantion that by the time I got there it was raining pretty hard? It was... I seriously had to think about whether to pull my camera out or not... But for the sake of my readers, I juggled my umbrella and my camera and got some shots! I know yhou all appreciate this. :)
Nothing like food and game stands (where you can win very detailed replicas of actual guns that shoot BB's...and they are so realistic that they are actually illegal in the US...but the kids here LOVE them) under the shadow (figuratively speaking) of the ancient temples and pagodas.
After all, all kids want some chicken on a stick (yakitori).
And to finish this post off, a photo of a staple of these types of food stands at festivals...Squid on a Stick!!! Mmmmmmmm. This place had a number of "cuts". You could buy the whole body on a stick, only half a body on a stick , or the legs (2 per order) on a stick. I had the legs. It was brushed with a soy based sauce, grilled until you get a light char, and it was sooooooo good. Chewy yet tender and very tasty. Yum.
That does it for this post. I hope you all enjoyed this photo tour or a very old and traditonal festival that I was lucky enough to see. The weather sucked. It was freezing. I was wet. But it was still a pretty memorable event.
I took more photos and such today and there are some more photos from the other days that I haven't gotten to yet including some ceremony for the same festival that I managed to catch at the end of the first day. Those will be uploaded soon!
(^_^)