Hakata Dontaku Festival

So this post is supremely late. Sorry! I've been really busy lately. But here it finally is.

I went to Hakata Dontaku Festival over Golden Week, which is apparently one of the bigger, more famous festivals in Japan. There were certainly a lot of people there for it. The festival goes on for two days, and though I was only there for one afternoon, it was still a lot of fun.

The main event I saw was the parade. There were lots of big wooden floats that people carried, the same as at my local Gion Festival. One looked like this:

It did this really cool thing I've got a video of here:




Before the main parade, the smaller sections apparently did their own mini parades throughout the surrounding area. Here's one marching through an outdoor shopping plaza:



And then there was the main parade. It was made up of all sorts of different stuff. There were people marching:

There were floats that were driven:

Floats that were pulled:

And floats that were carried:


Guys dressed as samurai showed up:













They made some noise:



Ladies danced with fans:



I don't even know what this guy is, but he danced too. It was really funny.



And I don't have much to add to that. It was all fun to watch, and I'm glad I went.

Gion Festival: Day 2

On the second day, we didn't get to the festival until evening. (Which was my fault for sleeping too late.) The big floats had already been pulled back from the temple to their starting points, but we ran into a bunch of the medium-sized ones. These were the kind with the dancers in them. Like this:



Every time the float stopped, there would be a new dance, and there were three floats altogether. Here's another from a side view:



And a short one:



I really wanted to get a good video of the men pulling the floats, but unfortunately it was too dark. I still want to show off the sounds of the drums and cheers, though, so I'm posting a very dark video below.



We ended up following one of the floats all the way back to its starting point, which kept us out until midnight. A few of my students were part of the official group, and Jamie and I even got to help pull the float a few times. Fortunately theses had wheels.















Everyone seemed really happy to see us, and it was a really fun night. I had no idea my little town could party so hard ;)