Kawagoe Matsuri in Saitama

This happened long ago, apologies I posted it so late!

I went to Kawagoe Matsuri this year in mid October. It is one of the largest festivals in the Kanto area, and is in Kawagoe Saitama. English Wikipedia on Kawagoe here.
Kawagoe is known as “little Edo”, and the town has preserved old buildings in the “kurazukuri” style.

During the festival gigantic floats are taken around the city, and at times they face off with one another and have a musical competition. It is said that the purpose of the competition is to see if the musicians inside of one float can throw the other floats musicians off beat.

Inside the float are dancers in costume, drummers, other bell percussion and a Japanese flute.

You can get a good idea of the size of the floats in this picture.

I love these masks. This one is meant to look like an old man. So is the one directly below this picture (the figure standing on the right, not the guy sitting down! That’s not a mask).

This guy is having a great time. He was so relaxed leaning back in his float keeping the beat on the drum. Of course I didn’t ask, but I’m sure this man is over 70 years old. I hope I am still so Genki when I reach that age.
These float (dashi) kind of reminded me of the floats I saw at Handa Matsuri in Nagoya… Way back in 2004!

- Harvey