Kawagoe Matsuri

Matsuri means festival. In a traditional Japanese way. Kawagoe is the name of an old town about an hour from where I am living. It is also called "Little Edo" because it is (so I'm told) The only town in Japan which has architechture which resembles how Tokyo used to look. There were lots of old buildings but that was not the reason I went. I went for the matsuri. Like the idiot I am, I remembered my camera but not my memory card so the following photos are courtesy of the friends from Newcastle I met there.

Here I am being blessed by a rather scary dragon. This means I will have good luck for one year. It was mostly children who lined up to do this but the people there said it was fine for us to do it too.This was kind of before the big parade, so there were lots of stalls selling food and things like this with performances on. It was really cool. At the food stalls I discovered that the Japanese have their own version of Jacket potato which is "traditional." It was very tasty but I have never seen SO much butter on one potato.There was a massive parade with loads of floats on huge wooden carts

being pulled by loads of people. I was allowed to join in which was very nice. We all had to shout something like "Shou rey" when we were pulling- I'm not sure what it means but It felt very jappropriate.

On the carts there were performers and musicians performing historical scenes and when the carts met each other in the street, they turned to each other and interacted, to continue the story- It was very clever.Afterwards we went to a shrine which was a bit different to the last one I prayed at because it had a bell to ring as well as clapping to get the god's attention.A japanese traditional drink called Ramune. It is a bit like lemonade but different. You open the bottle by pushing a marble into it which breaks the seal. I have kept one bottle as a souvenir but I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring it home in my luggage.