We made a pit stop at Starbucks for drinks and air conditioning. They've had these cake pops for a little while now so I decided to try the strawberry cheesecake one. Interesting to say the least.
No parade or matsuri in Japan is complete without hula dancers! Seriously. The Rose Festival had lots of different halaus performing, but I'm not sure if all the women in this photo are from different halaus or the same one. They danced to a song about Kamehameha that was in Japanese (lolwut) and my two friends were beyond surprised when I told them I had never heard it before.
After the hula dancers, the samba dancers came by~ I was a bit taken aback by the outfits, since most of the dancers had little more than bedazzled bras and thongs on and I had thought this was supposed to be a more traditional festival. They were all fierce and amazing, regardless.
The last big group of floats to pass by were the more typical things I've come to expect from these types of parades. The lantern things, the guys carrying shrines (although no one ran with them full-speed like in Odawara), etc. I can't remember any of the proper names and I am too lazy to Google, so just be happy with my half-assed descriptions.
I was disappointed to only see one group of yankees carrying a shrine! I thought for sure I'd get to see a few more tattoos and crazy hair in Omiya, but my friend said those types come out after all the festivities have wrapped up. Sad pandas.
And I finally got to eat one of these spiral potato things! I've seen them at the bigger festivals but I never got to eat one. It was delicious and paired very well with yakitori.
I have ONE MORE DAY OF WORK and then summer vacation! SO CLOSE IT HURTS X_X
That's the coolest thing I've ever seen! XDDD I wanna go to a Japanese parade!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was living in Nagoya, they had a Hawai'ian festival and lots of Hawai'ian music/food/etc! I felt right at home XDD
The pictures are cool! I didn't see anything like this when I was in Japan. :( Although I did see Brazilian dancers dressed like that at a tabehoudai I went to with my club.
ReplyDeleteThat potato thing looks freaking amazing!