Aomori Nebuta Festival

The end of July-early August is the season of festivals, it seems. One of the annual festivals for early August, and actually one of the most famous festivals of northern Japan, is the Aomori Nebuta Festival in Aomori and is part of the three festivals of Tohoku that are in the first week of August. It is an upbeat festival that has homemade and handpainted floats that proceed in a parade with music and dancing. Although the origins of the festival are unclear, it is thought to be a post-battle celebration. 

The day before my birthday, Charles and I were fortunate enough to get to go on a trip to Aomari and watch the parade. We got to the city a few hours early for the parade, so we had the opportunity to walk around the area in which the floats were stored and people were getting ready. Here we got to look at the floats up close, and it was incredible. Both the size and the level of detail is insane. The floats were hand painted. You could see the brush strokes on the paper. We walked around the main area of the city and bought some souvenirs (I got socks that had fish on them!). 

On our way to find food, we ended up at Utou Junja Shrine. It was a small little area, but it felt like we were being transported out of the city in the middle of downtown. It is actually amazing how the Japanese people do that. These little natural sanctuaries are in the middle of a busy city. We ended up sitting down next to a little pond that had a bunch of turtles in it! There was even one really curious turtle who kept coming up to us, perching itself on the ledge and staring at us. It even got out of the water at one point but couldn't get up over a curb, or it may have walked right up to me. It was so cute! 

For dinner, we got ourselves some Yakisoba, sitting by the water to eat it. At this point, it was time to head toward our seats for the parade. Along the way, we stopped at this cute little table that was selling snow cones with homemade apple syrup (Aomori is known for its apples). I walked up, and it was almost a little scary. Everyone was yelling their handful of English words that they knew. This family was actually really sweet. In our conversations, I mentioned that my birthday was the next day, and they ended up singing me Happy Birthday! It was so much fun! If I get to go back, I will go to their shop. It wasn't far off the main street. The snow cone, by the way, was actually super delicious. It even had chunks of apples in it. It's probably the best snowcone I've ever had. 

The parade itself was an experience. All of the music (flutes and drums) were done live by people walking down the street, and the floats were pushed by a bunch of guys. Which is not something we typically see in the US. The floats in US parades are usually motorized, but with the people punching them, they were able to move around the street and interact with the audience. There were several times when it would stop and turn and almost charge at the audience. You could see the effort don't their faces trying to stop the momentum of the gigantic floats. 

Between the musicians and the floats were large groups of dancers. Something interesting about this parade is that anyone can join the parade as a dancer. They just have to have the outfit, and every department store in the city sells them. They had bells attached to their outfits and jumped around. It is actually said that if you catch a bell that fell off of the dancer, it was good luck. Many of them just tossed bells toward the audience. I ended up going home with five bells and two fans that were being handed out by people in the parade. 

But that's not all!

We went and saw the parade on Friday, but the festival actually ended on Monday. So I went back to see the finale. The finale consisted of the four winning floats from the festival being loaded onto boats and paraded around the harbor and fireworks. I took the train up and arrived right as the parade was starting. I ended up getting a spot on the beach to watch. The downside was that my whole view was being framed by two bridges. I guess that is what I get for not getting there earlier. I could just see the floats through the bridge at the bottom, and some of the fireworks were cut off by a bridge above me. Something I found interesting was that the fireworks weren't just after the boats went by but actually, as they started their way around the parade route. So it was boat + fireworks four times. This was actually one of the most interesting fireworks displays I've ever seen. The fireworks themselves were so good, with a really good mix of different types. There were even some that were in shapes, like elephants and cat faces and hearts. The only strange part was that the fireworks lasted for an hour and a half, but it wasn't steady. There were 3-10 minutes between spurts of fireworks.  The later the fireworks went, the shorter the gaps between were, but it's still interesting that there were some. If I didn't know what time the fireworks were supposed to be, I probably would have left early because I thought it was over. Still super glad I went and will hopefully go again.