Shiga Trip - pt 3 - Minakuchi Matsuri

So as I mentioned in my last blog,  I found out that Minakuchi, a small town in Shiga Prefecture was having their Matsuri (local festival) that weekend, so I decided to stick around to check it out.   お城を見た後、僕は滋賀県水口市で何時間待てました、その週末は水口祭りが有った。

For those who don't know, matsuri ( wikipedia) means festival and in Japan pretty much every town, city or region has at least one matsuri a year.  Its usually related to a local  shrine or temple or legend or minor diety.  When I lived in Fukuoka in Western Japan, the big one was the Yamakasa held in July, but they also had the Dontaku during Golden Week.

But even small towns have their own festivals,  some are more famous than others, and some are more unique than others.    Apparently the epicenter for Minakuchi's is the aptly named 'Minakuchi Shrine.  Which was only like a 5 minute walk from the castle ruins (its a pretty small town):　　祭り始まる前水口寺へ行った：

Ok, not the biggest shrine i've seen for sure,  but not bad.  They were still getting set up for the festival, which didn't start til about sunset...

They had one tree still blooming (is it a cherry blossom?),  I was afraid I was going to completely miss the cherry blossom season this year, but it looks like I got something... すごい！まだ桜が有る？

If you've never been to a Japanese Shinto shrine before, they're a bit similar to Chinese temples, but there's some customs that are different...

there's a bell on a rope, you're supposed to pull the rope to ring the bell, then bow, make a prayer, clap and then bow again...  

And in case you forget (or have never been to a shrine but somehow can read japanese), they have it written down...   (中國人注意:  '拝' 是日式簡體字的'拜'). 

面白よ礼拝説明！でも日本語が分かったら多分説明が要らない。

Most of these festivals seem to revolve around moving heavy objects around...  i'm not joking!  some of them are quite dangerous because they make people run down the street lifting or dragging heavy wooden shrines at high speed. 

Minakuchi is not very dangerous, and not particularly thrilling...  I didn't get a chance to research it much, but basically from what I could figure out, they basically have these giant carts pulled around with ropes,  in the carts are a bunch of kids playing instruments...  they had justed rolled this one to the Minakuchi shrine (from some storage garage down the street) when I came back (from taking a short nap in the Minakuchi public library...)

they were clearing the kids out as they were about to roll it into the shrine grounds.

These guys weren't very helpful with the pulling...

But eventually they got it in.

One universal thing about these festivals are the booths...  all along the streets they have temporary booths set up selling food, snacks, drinks, toys or other junk... 屋台一杯が在った。

Some of the food looks pretty good (takoyaki, yakitori, fried squid, etc), but i generally avoid 'street food' -- even in japan.　美味しそうのに、僕は’道理の食べ物をあまり食べませんけど。。。

I'm actually kind of curious how these things work... it seems like they have these booths at all kinds of events over the course of the year - for hanami (cherry blossom viewing), for matsuri, for summer fireworks, for fall colors watching, for new years, etc...   I wonder if there's people who just make a living going town to town setting their booth up at these local festivals.

I wanted to include one more picture...

I just wanted to let everyone know --  Double Zero Yaki had the most attractive okonomiyaki wait staff i've EVER seen...   but i'm a sucker for a pretty woman in glasses. :-P

丸丸焼きのスタフ一番綺麗なお好み焼き女と思います。；-P