13 March Omihachiman Festival

Near the edge of Lake Biwa (Biwako) is a smallish town called Omihachiman. While it is certainly not a tourist destination, I had found a small entry on a Japanese festival website which mentioned that it has a festival on the 13th of March. This was the same day as the famous Fire festival in Nara, which is a HUGE tourist event, for both foreigners and Japanese people. I was very tempted to go, but decided that as I had already been to Nara, and as I was alone that I might have more fun at a smaller local event. So off I went to Omihachiman. The train journey was an event in itself, as I had to take a local train, and saw many interesting sights out the window, however as it was a local train I felt too self concious to take any photos out the window.

Eventually I arrived at the station. Now, normally I make sure I have a map and lots of information before I go anywhere this time I had no map, no idea where the festival was, or what time it started. I later found out that it was at Himure Hachiman gu Shrine, and the festival is called Sagicho (burning) festival. I wish I had known about the 'burning' part of the translation, as when everything seemed to be winding down on dusk I went home, missing out on what looks like (from photos on other people's blogs) a pretty fun night. But anyway the day was a LOT of fun. I enjoyed having no idea what was going on, being spoken to by Japanese people in various states of intoxication. The atmosphere was wonderful, and it was so nice to be amongst people who were so happy and having an amazing time. For me this just emphasizes the fact that even when there is a disaster, life goes on for those who are not directly affected.

Since I didn't really know what was going on you can make up your own mind about the events of the day from this selection of the 280 photos I took. One thing I did understand was that all the floats have a Rabbit on them, as it this the year of the rabbit.

*A mostly girls float*

*Two floats doing battle*

*The result of the clash is that they become stuck together*

*So many delicious festival foods!*

*I took a cable car up to a Temple on top of the mountain next to where the festival was taking place*

*View of the festival from the cable car, the shrine is in the middle to the left of the main street, the top, mostly red, section is the floats, and the lower, mostly yellow, section, is the food stalls*

*View from the top of the mountain, in the cable car*

*It was very crowed with hundreds of people and only one foreigner (me)*

*Float crossing the river*

*Another float in front of what I thought was a church*

*Beautiful view along the river as I walked under a bridge*

*Chaos of the crowd and clashing floats*

*The Himure Hachiman gu shrine*

*This was one of my favourite floats*

*Elementary School students with their smaller sized float*

*A Small museum filled with 'Hina Ningyo' Royal family dolls for the 'Dolls Day Festival'*

*Float carried by Elementary school student* 

*The last float I saw, with a tired guy resting against it*

*The wonderful sight when exiting Kyoto Station*