Festivals are one of the most popular summer activities in Japan. Every major city organizes its own festival at least once a year, but usually twice a year. The most famous one is of course Kyouto’s Gion Matsuri. But Kanazawa has its own too and we were lucky enough to get to even participate in one part of the festival this year during our very first weekend.
The festival’s “opening ceremony” was the floating of the hundreds of paper lanterns down one of the Kanazawa’s river. That part is officially called Touro Nagashi (灯籠流し), toro (灯籠) meaning the “lantern” and nagashi (流し) meaning “to float”. In the Buddhist religion it is believed that these lamps will guide the souls of the dead to their resting place (wherever it is, I couldn’t figure it out from what the host mother Japanese). It was truly a beautiful spectacle, accompanied by music and drum performances. It got especially interesting when the lanterns started to receive some interesting shapes, such as daruma (a Japanese famous doll), fruits and at some point, there was even a Pikachu lantern… I am not sure if that a little paper Pikachu can really guide a soul of a dead, but it definitely shows how Pikachu has entered permanently their culture.
And here's the little video I took of the ceremony:
No comments:
Post a Comment