So we ended back at the bar a few blocks from here. I got home way to early in the morning and still couldn't sleep so I did some laundry and some cleaning and some reading. I then slept for an hour and a half then got up at like 8:30 to catch the train back to Tsudanuma. I met up with a bunch of other teachers who live near the other school and two former students who now just are friends and fabulous tour guides.
There's this big festival in Asakusa (ah-sack-sa) which is an old neighbourhood of Tokyo in the north of the city. So what happens is that the smaller neighbourhoods in the area make these really elaborate and extravagant shrines to present their gods at the temple and pretty much take them on a tour of the neighbourhood. I believe it's called Sanja Matsuri (Christopher B, correct me if I'm wrong, if you know). The portable shrines are often quite heavy, some are really huge, but the ones that we saw are just average size, only a couple tonnes. The people get together and carry the shrines/floats on their shoulders, with like 50 people or so maybe less, all at the same pace. The carriers have to get really close together and bounce up and down to the beat of the drums and flutes that preceed them. They move really slowly so that they don't ram into each other. Everyone around them is cheering and chanting with the drums and are all dressed up like a team and it's really cool. They carry them all through the streets and to the temple, from something like 8 in the morning until 8 at night. What a symbol of a community in worship. The carriers totally sacrifice their bodies and consider it a privilege to do so. The streets are all shut down and people line the edges to cheer and then to follow the processions. It was cool to see the processions in both the small streets that would get totally jammed up, and in the massive 4 lane streets in larger commercial areas. We even got to see two shrines passing each other so the crowd was insane. It felt like a small town fair with kids all dressed up (and even their own little processions) and the avenues leading up to the big shrines are always lined with booths selling all sorts of yummy treats and goodies (mmm, tako, and no that's not Mexican..so very far from Mexican). It just had this great, small community feel to it, with 2 million people. The crowds didn't even phase me, in fact it wasn't until looking at some of my pictures that I realized just how big the crowds were, but if you wanted to get away from the crowds it was easy, you just had to go one block over to where the route had already been, or wouldn't be for several hours. It was cool.
We walked around a lot. I'm going to bed early tonight.
