Showing posts with label ibaraki. Show all posts

ishioka matsuri


On Saturday, we went with Yuka to her hometown in Ibaraki Prefecture to see the first day of the three day long Ishioka Matsuri, which is famous for its dashi floats (above) and shi-shi tiger dancers (below). It was a great night - I always have a great time at festivals in Japan and this one was especially fun; it's hard not to be in a good mood when everyone else is out in the streets wearing their festival clothes having a great time. So here are too many photos selected from the too many photos that I took - there'll be larger versions of these and more at my photoblog over the next few days.



I'm pretty sure I've been having nightmares about these guys for my entire life. It's not just me, right? They're kind of freaky?


Not that they're any less freaky than the masks above, but the fox mask has always been my favorite.


Pushing a float.



the best playground ever


Just an ordinary, peaceful playground, except for...


GODZILLA!!!!! If I'd gone to school here as a kid, I would have had SO MUCH FUN. 

Yesterday Yuka took us to her hometown to see the massive Ishioka Festival, where we ate lots of festival food (yakitori and kebobs, mostly), miraculously avoided getting crushed in the crowd of parade floats bearing dancers and men wearing lion heads, and basically had an awesome time. This lazy post (taken the next morning as we walked her mom's dog around the block) is because it's taking me some time to sort through the six hundred photos of the festival (anyone who's seen me with a camera at a photogenic event knows that this is not an exaggeration, though I'm sure my hard drive wishes it was). At any rate, many photos (though not six hundred, I promise) to follow (again, for real, I promise). 

Powered by Blogger.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...