Adventures of Anette: Mikoshi

Showing posts with label Mikoshi. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Life in a Japanese village: Benten-san Matsuri 弁天さん祭り

The great thing about living in a Japanese village is that you get to participate in a lot of activities that you wouldn't have the chance to if you lived in a big city. The reason for this is that my community really likes foreigners, and they let me participate in all their local activities. I guess foreigners are more rare when you get just a little bit outside the bigger cities (I actually live only a 30 minutes bike ride from Kyoto, so its really not that far)

Last weekend I joined my neighbors for the local sports day (運動会), and this weekend I got to participate in their Benten-san festival.

This festival is for the Japanese goddess Benten (more commonly known as Benzaiten), who is considered one of the seven Japanese Gods of Fortune.

Drummers in front of the local shrine

Preparation by the local Buddhist priest

After a meeting with other people from the community at the local shrine we took of with our mikoshis, one for the men, one for the women and some smaller ones for the kids to carry.

So what we did was basically carrying the mikoshi to different parts of the neighborhood, and when we got to a new area, we stopped and took a break. We were welcomed by the people there, and while the drummers were playing and some of the men danced around in dragon costumes we received food, drinks and snack from them.

The men carrying the otoko-mikoshi (男神輿)

The women's onna-mikoshi 女神輿

Me carrying the mikoshi

We also stopped by a couple of senior citizens' homes, and it seemed like the inhabitants thought it was nice with a little festival too.

A dragon entertaining an old lady at the senior citizens' home

I think we might have stopped by more than 10 different places during the day, and at all the different places we received warm welcomes from the people living there. Trust me, when the day was done I'm pretty sure i had gained some kilos.. I ate and drank way too much, haha..

Lunch break! For the 4th or 5th time that day.. :p

Also, we was really lucky with the weather! Both Friday and Sunday had been terrible, with rain poring down like in my hometown Bergen.. And actually it was supposed to rain on Sunday as well, but I guess we had good luck on our side. The weather was instead almost too hot, haha :)
Anyway, it was a really great day! I wish they had these types of festival more often.. I had so much fun! Not to mention that it is not often that foreigners get the chance to participate in festivals like that, so it was also kind of a unique experience. The people in the neighborhood was so welcoming, and some even invited me to come visiting them whenever I want.
Conclusion: Haradani might be situated in the middle of nowhere, but you can still have some nice experiences here:) Haha..

So, some final pictures from the matsuri:

The mikoshi from a closer angle

Apparently it brings good luck to stick your head into the dragons mouth..!


祭, the Japanese sign for Festival.

My neighbors serving us Japanese food such as yakitori.

Some more drummers

Again, the onna-mikoshi

Finally back at the shrine after nearly 7 hours of walking (, eating and drinking;p)

Some final rituals before the matsuri is over.

Peace out!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Shrine

The Gion Festival - 祇園祭

Anette 11:34:00 PM

The Gion Matsuri is one of Japans most famous festivals, and it takes place in Kyoto in July every year. The festival lasts for weeks, with new things happening every day, which is a good thing for me since I have been quite busy writing reports the last couple of days.
But this morning I finally finished my last report for this semester, so me and Yuma decided to go into town and enjoy the festival.

After spending some time hanging out in the city we headed for Yasaka Shrine. We were lucky with the timing, because we just arrived in Gion when one of the parades were about to start, and we managed to get good spots as well. The Gion Matsui is really popular, there were so many people it was almost impossible to move..

The parade is about to start

Waiting for the 祇園祭-parade to start

Samurai!

There were quite a lot of people participating in the parade..

..And there are some children who are participating in the parade as well, though most of the participants are grownups..

After having watched the whole parade we continued our towards Yasaka Shrine again. Though there was a lot of people on the sidewalk there was no cars on the road, so we took the easy way..

Yasaka Jinja is of course also quite crowded during the festival..

At the Yasaka we met up with Asami and Tomoya, who also had been hanging around town for a couple of hours. We first decided to find a place we could eat ice cream, but ended up in a Mexican restaurant instead.

Yuma, me, Asami and Tomoya in front of Yasaka Jinja

Mexican food is not that common in Japan actually, at least not in Kyoto; you have to go to special stores where they sell foreign food in order to find it. But there are some Mexican restaurants in Kyoto though, and the one we went to was called the "Mexican House Vicuña" - メキシカンハウス　ビクニャ near Sanjo.

Time for dinner and Mexican beer!

Waiting for the dinner

The dinner was really good, and there was even live music in Mexican style! The only thing that kind of annoyed me a bit, was that the service charge was not included in the price of the dinner, cause it usually is in Japan.. But anyway, we had a good time and the music was great as well.

A picture of the restaurant

When we got out of the restaurant we run into another parade on the way to the place we had parked our bikes. Lucky! Seems that the Gion Matsuri never ends:).. A great day, and I'm already looking forward to celebrating this festival next year as well. Then I'm going to wear a yukata for certain.!

Our last glimpse of Gion Matsuri: a Mikoshi (神輿)

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Mikoshi

Festivals in Kyoto: The Fire Festival in Kurama

Anette 1:32:00 PM

On Friday the 22. October it was time for the so-called Fire Festival (火祭り) situated in a little town called Kurama (鞍馬) by the mountain side a little north of Kyoto.

Right after school was finished me, Ericka, Silke and Raynor got on our bikes and headed towards Kurama. Before going there we had gotten warnings about the sloping terrain and that the trip would take approximately two hours. None the less, we had also heard rumors about crammed trains going to Kurama at previous fire festivals, so we decided to stick to our plan.

Going there was actually a lot easier then expected. It took us a little over an hour to get there and the terrain was not bad at all. Of course there was some slopes on the way but not nearly as much as predicted. Going out of Kyoto and biking through the wooden landscape on our way to Kurama was worth the trip in itself I think. The road was empty most of the time, and beside the occasionally car passing by the only thing we could hear was the sound of the cricket chirping.

Arriving in Kurama we got to experience the atmosphere of the town getting ready for the festival. People dressed up in traditional outfits, kids in the street carrying torches while shouting Saire-ya Sairyo. At this point there was not many tourists around us cause it seemes that most people going to the festival was traveling by train, and since we arrived from the opposite side of town we managed to avoid the crown in the beginning.

But as we walked towards the core of the town the crowd got bigger an in the end it was so crammed that we almost couldn´t move. We kept going north in an attempt to find somewhere we could eat and after a while we found ourselves situated just outside the Kurama Onsen (Hotspring) where we bumped into some other friends from Ritsumeikan University.

Here we finally found something to eat (Takoyaki!) and we spent the evening by the bonfire there. Since we went to Kurama by bike we had the opportunity to stay even after the tourists had left by the last train back to Kyoto. On our way back to the area we had parked out bikes we had the chance to look more closely at the festival without being pushed around like we did on our way to the Onsen area. At this point we also got to see the locals carrying two golden Mikoshi.

Mikoshi

Our trip back to Kyoto went fast since we only were going downhill and we didn´t have any trouble finding the right way to go either since all we had to do was following the street. For people going to visit the Kurama Fire festival from Kyoto I strongly suggest renting a bike instead of taking the train..! ;)

2011 Update: Kyoto Daytrips - Biking to Kurama

Monday, October 11, 2010

Shrine

Festivals in Kyoto: Kyoto´s Student Festival (京都学生祭典)

Anette 9:16:00 PM

On Sunday it was time for Kyoto´s Student Festival (京都学生祭典) taking place at the Heian Jingu shrine (平安神宮) in the eastern part of Kyoto.

Me and Silke went a bit earlier than the others, and did some sightseeing in the area where the Heian-jinja was located. We found some really nice streets there, which kinda seemed like typical tourist spots though.

Anyway, after our little sightseeing trip we went to the shrine and it was time for my first big japanese festival! We got to see a lot of cool dancing

(actually a competition between different dancing groups), some who played on japanese Taiko-drums, a bit of rock music and not at least the carrying of a japanese Mikoshi (神輿 -> see the picture under).

Some of the other exchange students were actually participating as well, which made it extra cool to come and watch. For those who likes festivals I guess Kyoto is the place to go, in general there are a lot of festivals here.

Friends from SKP!

At the end of the festival they announced the winner of the dance contest too, and it seems the whole thing were going to be broadcasted on TV.

We had to actually join in on a crowd dance as well, though that was easier said than done with all the people around us.

After the festival it was time for dinner, and we found a restaurant which was called VeryBerry. Just the name tells me we should have chosen somewhere else to eat. Oh well.. We got placed on the second floor where there basically no-one else but us five, and the waitress turned on a cd with american children´s songs.. It was.. Bad.. The food was bad too, it reminded me about McDonalds but it was probably thrice the price. Haha..

After the disappointing dinner me and Silke went back by bike and the other three by taxi. We catched up with them at the train station close to our dorm though, even though it took us around 40 minutes to go there.. I must say I really love my bike, haha..