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July 24, 2004
Gion Festival Prep
[Some Images are Clickable!!!] This is old news, but I have great pictures so I'm gonna post it anyway. Heh. Double check the facts before you start quoting them. Most of this is second hand knowledge and stuff. Gion Matsuri happens every year in the middle of July in Kyoto. There are 3 big festivals in Kyoto, and they are called 3大祭り。 Literally, 3 big festivals. One of them is Gion, the others are Aoi and Jidai Matsuri. Gion Matsuri itself including preparation and all the mini events and stuff lasts for like one entire month. Huge. I was down in Kyoto about one week before the festival started, and got to see the preparation for the event. This is something that even Japanese people will go out of their way and get down to take pictures of. It was pretty cool. In different parts around Kyoto, they stagger the preparation of what is called "Hoko", those big decorated things that look like moving shrines. That's the technical description right there. So that if you around to all the places you can see Hoko in all forms, from a pile of wood to the giants they become when they're almost complete.
Anyway, that was cool stuff. I should put these pics up as a gallery sometime. If I'm ever able to unlazy myself enough to start using MakeThumbs again... -Harvey If you ever want bigger higher quality versions of any of the pics on this site, just let me know and I'll prepare them for ya. Posted by Harvey at July 24, 2004 03:34 PMComments
gion, gion, gion. I've heard that name before. Oh thats right im reading a book at the moment called "memoirs of a geisha" and gion is the geisha district =) Posted by: jieshi on July 26, 2004 01:33 PMYeah that's right. Gion is still popular today for dates and stuff. It's an area in Kyoto that still looks -old school-. I asked a friend why they call it Gion Matsuri if it doesn't happen in Gion... and he didn't know. Posted by: Harvey on July 26, 2004 01:59 PMI didn't realize that they were preparing them in the street, otherwise I would have been at the scene clicking away. I thought it was like Junkanoo (Bahamian *festival*) where non-participants don't get to see the design till the night of the competition. Anyway, after seeing tsujimawashi I really think I need to get a digicam that can take decent videos! Thanks for the pics, they're quite neat... Ja Posted by: Nadine on August 2, 2004 08:23 PMI didn't realize that they were preparing them in the street, otherwise I would have been at the scene clicking away. I thought it was like Junkanoo (Bahamian *festival*) where non-participants don't get to see the design till the night of the competition.Anyway, after seeing tsujimawashi I really think I need to get a digicam that can take decent videos! Thanks for the pics, they're quite neat... Ja Comment?
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