Hamamatsu matsuri

On Wednesday, Ayako and I arrived back in Hamamatsu from our camping trip. This is also the first day of the Hamamatsu matsuri (festival). It's a big 3 day event and which kite flying is the special aspect of this city's festival. There are more than 150 areas in our city. There were thousands of people on a huge field helping fly their area's kite. Amazingly though, there was no garbage to be seen. There were volunteers giving out a glove and garbage to people who wanted to help keep the area clean. After, people could bring back their garbage and receive different types of prizes accordin to how much garbage they collected. There were lots of kids trying to find garbage, but there was hardly any to be found.

Each area has it's our large kite which they fly down near the beach:The kites are often about 3 metres by 3 metres and have huge lengths of rope so they can get very high in the sky. It's takes many people to fly one. Each kite has a special design for that area:
We were lucky to join the festival for one day. We joined a friend's area (not where I live) and so we wore their 'happi' (special jacket for that area). He's me looking like karate kid in the happi:
The back of the happi also has the design for the area. Our's is the kanji (Chinese character) for dragon:
This is Melissa and her dad and his wife. Melissa was the one who could get us onto the area's team for one day. It can cost a bit to buy everything you need to join a team, so we borrowed everything for the day.
Here's Christine and Ayako in their happis:
Here's the kite for the area we joined. The name in yellow at the bottom is the name of a baby from a family who gave the money for the kite. This festival is special for 1-year-old babies. The family will give lots of money for the kite, and their baby's name is on the kite.
Here is the kite up close:
You can see it takes lots of people to help fly it. On the last day of the festival, the areas try to see whose kite can stay up longest by trying to cut the other kite's rope with their own. Just like 'dog fights' when I was young, but instead with thousands of people participating.
Here's the huge spool of rope used for the kite:
At night, each area helps pull their yatai (float) around the downtown area. There were over a hundred of these floats:
Each float wants to have a beautiful float, so they can cost upto a million dollars for one.
Inside, girls and women play instruments:
The floats were very beautiful to see at night:
And the woodwork is really intricate when you see it up close:
Here you can see a few of them coming down the street:

After this, each area takes their float back to their area's shrine where it is kept in a garage. The people then go around their area with lanterns playing bugle and chanting. They visit families which have had a baby that year and wish it good luck. The family then supplies lots of food and drink to everyone who has come. We visited 2 families the night that we joined the area. Since the streets are very narrow here, it was amazing to see 300 people show up to somebody's home and dance around and then for the family to give everyone lots of food and drink. Basically the matsuri was organised chaos. People are allowed to go crazy, but then they all stop when they are told. Each night, I could hear lots of chanting outside my apartment, but then at 12 midnight, all was quiet. This is due to there being strict rules, and if an area doesn't follow the rules, they may not be allowed to participate in next year's festival.