Photos

I posted here before a picture from the Kanto Matsuri in Akita. The day after that festival we proceeded to Aomori for the Nebuta Matsuri. This was during last day of the festivities so the parade was in the afternoon and later that night the winning floats were paraded in the sea during the fireworks display.

I'm getting ahead with my story but first you may ask, what is Nebuta Matsuri? Ok, this is the info i got from the gojapan website. Aomori Nebuta Festival is one of the most famous festivals in Japan and is known as Japan's fire festival.It's held from Aug. 2 to Aug. 7 every year. Over 20 nebuta floats are pulled by people in the streets of Aomori-city. Also,Aomori citizens and audiences participate in the festival as dancers called haneto.

To make a nebuta float,wooden bases are built at first, and frames are made with wires. Then, Japanese papers (washi) are glued on the frames.Finally, Japanese historical figures or Kabuki characters are painted on the paper.

If you're interested to witness this festival, check out this website: http://www.nebuta.or.jp/english/index_e.htm

Now, back to my story, it was a really hot day but we didn't want to miss the parade so after arriving in Aomori we just put our backpacks in the hotel and then we proceeded to the main road. We were lucky to squeeze in the crowd and had the best view of the parade. Those nebuta floats were really huge and another float carrying the taiko drummers accompany every float along with the haneto dancers chanting la sera! sera! la sera! sera!

The NHK crew had a live feed and was taking footages of the crowd. I maybe in his cam but he was also in my cam. Fair deal.