After a successful cooking class and kushikatsu / karaoke party on Saturday we headed off to Nagoya on Sunday morning. Unfortunately we missed the main festivities at Oogata Shrine for the Hime-no-miya festival but still savoured the free beer, relaxed among the plum blossoms, got some pink and white mochi and enjoyed some local foods (tebasaki and misokatsu) for dinner at a local izakaya
Monday was a chilled day in Nagoya inbetween the two festivals. Stuart remembered it was White Day so I got some marshmellows and chocolates in return for my Valentines day gifts. We trained out to visit Nittai-ji, did a spot of shopping around Sakae, relaxed in Central Park and at the Oasis 21 Bus Terminal. We didn’t visit the one touristy thing Nagoya is really known for (its castle) but we enjoyed just having a chilled day exploring the city. It’s very easy to navigate and reminded me a bit of Sapporo with a big park in the centre and felt quite western. Had the famed miso-nikomi-udon for dinner at a local well-known restaurant and enjoyed staying at a ryokan with a nice Japanese garden and bath for a change of pace
The Hounen Matsuri is held at Tagata Jinja in Komaki, Nagoya every year on the 15th of March. If you have a chance I would definitely recommend going. We had the whole day to spend at the festival as our night bus wasn’t until about 11pm so it was nice to relax and enjoy it fully. There were heaps of festival yatai stalls which provided all our snacks for the day (yakitori, crepes, choco banana etc) and we got to get close to the omikoshi at Shinmei-sha and see the blessing before the parade started. The free sake flowed and we followed the omikoshi down the hill to Tagata Jinja.
Once it was carefully placed in the shrine, the hype continued building up to the mochi throwing at 4pm. There were a number of announcements and signs discouraging young children and elderly people from participating and as soon as it started you could see why. Imagine being surrounded on two sides by raised platforms with about 50 people on each all throwing mochi into the crowd. If you’ve eaten mochi it may have been in a soup or nabe, or been cooked so that the insides are soft and sticky however these were anything but. With a number of these rock hard mochi flying through the air towards you from all angles and people desperate to catch them (it is said to bring good health and fertility if you eat them) the crowd got crazy. see this video (pardon the screams) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNRTT2-brw&feature=related We even saw a guy with a crash helmet diving across the ground to get the ones that had fallen between people (taking a few out as he left) and a few people being attended to in ambulances for black eyes and what looked like broken noses – Intense but a very exciting and interesting festival if you have the chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment