Livin' the McDream: 5 Festivals in 8 Days

As you may recall from previous posts, Aomori Nebuta was a highlight of our first couple months in Japan last year. We couldn't wait to go again! There's a video below among the photos.

Nebuta 2013 posts can be viewed here: Aomori Nebuta Festival 2013 - Part 1 and Aomori Nebuta Festival 2013 - Part 2

Festival History:
This is one of Japan's biggest and best festivals. It draws up to three million spectators each year.
During the festival, 24 large lantern floats are pushed along by human power, weaving back and forth and spinning around for the crowd. Along with each float are taiko drums, flutes, cymbals and a very large group of haneto (dancers) chanting "Rassera, Rassera!"
Local teams build the floats, which are constructed of painted washi paper over a wire frame and take an entire year to design and construct. They can be up to nine meters wide and five meters tall.

There are of course several legends as to where the festival got its start. One story is the festival originated in a purification ritual of placing lanterns on the water during the Tanabata Festival. Some documents describe the first Nebuta as a giant lantern created sometime between 1590-1607 to surprise the people in Kyoto during the Tanabata Festival. Another story is that a warlord once hid soldiers inside gigantic dolls to lure his enemies and succeed in destroying them. And the final story I've discovered was it originated in the custom of Neburi Nagashi, which was held to banish the invisible sleep demon who makes people drowsy during the summer when farm work is the busiest. Nemuri Nagashi used lanterns and lights and is thought to have evolved into today's Nebuta and Neputa. Supposedly in relation to battle, Nebuta signifies "departure for the front" where as Neputa is "triumphant return."

The festival is held every year August 2 - 7, the parade is at 7pm each night except for the 7th when it is at 1pm and followed by fireworks later in the evening. The parade route is approximately 3km long and is in downtown Aomori City. Aomori is about 63km (40 mi) from Misawa and the drive takes about 1 - 1 1/2 hours when taking toll roads. Tolls are about ¥1,300 each way.
This year we took the local train instead of driving...it was ¥1,800 each way per person and the trains were packed and stopped at pretty much every station (15 or 16 stops I think), seemed like it took forever.

The costume place.

We decided to dress up as hanetos again this year and participate in the parade. Keenan and the other guys weren't shocked this time when the ladies dressing us told them to drop their drawers, haha. Only issue we had was them dressing Keenan with a pink okoshi underskirt and him protesting to get a blue one. He won the battle.

Checking out the floats before the parade.

Ohhh, so this is how they plastic wrap a massive float!

This on the sidewalk seemed like a hazard to pedestrians...

Yakiniku before the parade again this year.

These nice ladies wanted their picture taken with me.

The weather did not cooperate for us this year and we had to deal with rain pretty much all afternoon and in the evening during the parade it poured! We tried to have fun but we were completely soaked in no time. Other participants weren't as spirited as last year either. We called off our dancing early and headed for the train station. They ended up calling an end to the parade a bit early because of the rain, very unusual I'm told. We enjoyed ourselves regardless and I will look forward to going one more time next year.