On May 3rd, 4th & 5th is the Hamamatsu festival. Each ward in the city dresses in their ward's outfits and help fly their ward's kite and then at night, there is a parade with each ward's float. (You can see more pictures of these on the
May 2006 page of my blog). I didn't take part in the festival as much this year, but Ayako and I still went down near the beach to watch the kites:
It's impressive watching about 100 of these large kites (one for each ward) flying together. On the last day, they have a huge kite dog-fight, with many kites falling. You can see the real size of the kites in the photo below. This kite is from my ward with a picture of a boar on it:
You can see people from another ward celebrating in their ward's outfits here:
At night their is a parade with people from each ward pulling their ward's fancy floats (which can look like small castles) through downtown. Each float can cost up to a million dollars to make and so can take many years for a ward to raise the money to buy one:
In the photo below, you can see some of the detail of the wood carving on a float:
In this photo, two wards are celebrating together:
After this, the people from their ward would return with their float to the shrine for the town. After that, they visit houses that have had a baby in the past year. I was lucky this year to help one of the houses with a baby greet the well-wishers. About 100 people from this small ward visit the family's house and have a celebration for the new baby. The house provides food and drink for everyone (so it's not cheap for the family). Next year, I'll try to get photos of this, so that it will be easier to explain.
It's impressive watching about 100 of these large kites (one for each ward) flying together. On the last day, they have a huge kite dog-fight, with many kites falling. You can see the real size of the kites in the photo below. This kite is from my ward with a picture of a boar on it:
You can see people from another ward celebrating in their ward's outfits here:
At night their is a parade with people from each ward pulling their ward's fancy floats (which can look like small castles) through downtown. Each float can cost up to a million dollars to make and so can take many years for a ward to raise the money to buy one:
In the photo below, you can see some of the detail of the wood carving on a float:
In this photo, two wards are celebrating together:
After this, the people from their ward would return with their float to the shrine for the town. After that, they visit houses that have had a baby in the past year. I was lucky this year to help one of the houses with a baby greet the well-wishers. About 100 people from this small ward visit the family's house and have a celebration for the new baby. The house provides food and drink for everyone (so it's not cheap for the family). Next year, I'll try to get photos of this, so that it will be easier to explain.
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