Kawagoe!

Me, Erling and our friend Hina travelled to Saitama prefecture (about 35 minutes from Oji) to go to the yearly Kawagoe festival. Kawagoe is an amazing city. Its intensely picturesque with tons of shrines and temples all over, I've seen many shrines since arriving in Tokyo (hell, I walk through one every day on the way to work) but Kawagoe was something else. There is a shrine on every block (slight exaggeration but the amount we accidently found was insane), and each of them - despite some being really small - were just as traditional, attractive and awe inspiring as the rest. Seriously, some of the views in that city were amazing, it killed me when my camera ran out of battery minutes after arriving - but never fear! I intend to go back some time soon to take a memory-card full of pictures (enough to win me every Project Trust photo competion they start, anyway!). The city's known as 'little Edo' (Edo being an old name for tokyo), because the architecture of some of the preserved traditional buildings is supposed to be the best insight into what Tokyo was like before it lost most of its historic qualities after the 1923 earthquake and the WW2 bombings.

The festival itself started in the year 1648 and is held every year on the third weekend of October. Each area of the city decorate a float to push around town during the weekend and the floats are incredible. Theyre really tall, beautifully designed and decorated and have an army of people on them playing the flute, taiko drums and dancing. Each float also has its own 'character', which is the only way to describe it, essentially someone on it dressed up and dancing on it. One we saw had a guy dressed up as a monkey, another a dragon, another a woman dancing with a fan, and so on... each one more colourful than the last. Seriously an amazing sight, especially when two met down a street and they'd continue playing their music and dancing, trying to knock the other float out of beat. I'll have to steal some pictures off the others because the festival was seriously class.

Aswell as the dozens of shrines and thousands of street stalls we visited, we also took ourselves to see Kawagoe castle, or atleast the only bit of it which is still left (the lord's residence which was built in 1848, the rest of the castle, which was built long before that, I assume was either pulled down or destroyed at sometime because in paintings it seems to have been huge with moats and tons of other structures). It was a really nice building, tatami floors in most rooms, the style of rooms that you think of when you think of traditional japan and an amazing traditional garden. Infact the garden was probably the best bit because for a while the three of us just sat on the edge of this wooden platform chatting with the view of the garden infront of us. Really nice place, definitely intend to go back.

As we were heading back to leave, the other two raided the candy store (Kawagoe is also apparently famous for its traditional sweets) and then I went and got meself a banana coated in chocolate on a stick. It looked so nice on the stand I couldnt help myself but it just reaffirmed my beliefs that fruit and foods that taste good should be kept WELL apart. Ergh. That wasnt the only thing I picked up though. I also managed to get a hold of two amazing masks, not quite traditional ones but a pokemon mask (piplup for any really sad people out there) and a naruto mask. I mustve looked really weird walking back to the station with a kids anime character mask on but never mind, it was a good laugh. People seemed to be amused, and kids nearby loved it, and luckily I was behind a mask AND had the anonymity of being in Tokyo (where you're very unlikely to see anyone you know unless youre in your local area) to protect me from embarassment. It was a festival anyway and I wasnt the only one wearing a silly mask (admittedly the others were about 7, but still). Pictures to come.

Also, another post to come for what Ive been upto in the past two weeks, I just wanted to get this jotted down so that I didnt forget anything!

Sayonara!

(Pictures by Erling Garriock)