Not that I am matsuri-obsessed or anything, but this weekend included time at both a very local Bon Odori festival and at Tomioka Hachiman-gu’s matsuri.

I’ll dedicate this post to the Bon Odori on Saturday night and my next post to Tomioka Hachiman-gu on Sunday. I discovered by looking at the bulletin board in my building that there would be a Bon Odori over in the next chōme (a chōme is basically like a small district – usually a square area covering a block or two in either direction depending on the number of buildings, etc.), so we went over on Friday night, but arrived about 30 minutes before it ended and decided to return the next night as well.

Arriving about 30 minutes into the start the following night, we had to endure about 45 minutes of speeches (which basically consisted of a series of, as I call them, old chiefs making thank you speeches and then a never-ending session of raffle ticket number reading with people running up to collect prize bags). However, this was entirely tolerable because there was a great mood and energy in the air, the lanterns were blowing in the breeze, and there were kids running all over hopped up on sweet drinks and snack foods.

Anyway, a short video I made of one of the dances (which has suddenly made me desire owning this):

In addition to the dancing and the breezy evening, we also met Goro Ibuki (日本語/English) a pretty famous TV and Movie actor who does a lot of Samurai Drama type of roles. As LY is a fairly big fan of Jidaigeki, it was pretty exciting. Of course, she also asked if she could have her photo taken with him and he was very kind and obliging (despite the fact that he was being asked about every 10 minutes to pose for a photo with someone and he must have been somewhat tired of the process):