The day immediately after Halloween, jack o’lanterns and witches’ hats and brooms were taken off to give way to Christmas trees and decors. It may not be as early as Christmas in Philippines and you may not hear Christmas carols as often, still, this year’s Christmas decors are up early compared to how I remember my previous Christmases here in Japan. Indeed, they are such a joy to behold! 🙂
Merry Christmas everyone!
Hubs and I doesn’t really keep ourselves updated with the community billboard hence it came as a surprise to us when we went out the house and met some Mikoshi-costumed people and heard the boom of drums a few minutes after.
Right around the end of August, just when the peak of summer has just passed and temperatures have started to drop a bit, Mikoshi (神輿) parades are held all over Japan. The Mikoshi is actually a sacred palanquin where the spirits or diety of that particular festival are ceremoniously enshrined. Mind you, the mikoshis really are elaborately designed.
The Mikoshi is carried around by the people taking part in the parade.
The sacred palanquins are preceded by the drums, announcing its passage.
I once participated in a Mikoshi parade back in 2007 and interestingly enough, it was also here in Gumyoji. I can’t say though that I’d do it again. We didn’t wear tabi (足袋 or たび or the traditional Japanese socks) though like what this year’s participants did.
And it seems more elaborate this year because the priest paraded with the group.
Yeah there’s a high probability that I just didn’t notice the priest parading with us back then, laden as we are with the Mikoshi (yes, it is heavy!). But I do believe this year’s Mikoshi is more festive, more passionate, more feverish than it was years before. I could think of one reason why it is so but whether I’m right or wrong, it makes me happy that this kind of tradition that has been around for centuries is still going as strong as ever.
We were pretty much holed up inside our home the whole day. Hubs was pretty busy cutting up his books, scanning it and uploading in his Dropbox application so he can retrieve it in either his iPhone or iPad with the ibunko app. By scanning books, we can save up some room in the house (if a person buys an average of 10 books a week, you can pretty much imagine how his house looks like) and he can read them whenever or wherever he likes. Of course his favorite books won’t be dissected.
So since he’ll be cutting books, you can imagine how big his cutter was. Honestly though, I didn’t imagine the cutter to be as big as this! I was pretty confused with the size of the box when I was signing the delivery form.
And I was pretty impressed with the scanner Hubs ordered from Amazon. It can scan a back to back paper in just a second, without having to flip the paper to scan the other side like the one we had in the office.
Fruit of Hubs’ labor today. From iBunko App
Bunko by the way is a small sized paperback that’s pretty popular here in Japan.
Having had stayed inside the house the whole day, we were surprised that outside our the house, a festival was ongoing in the open field just a few steps from our apartment. Thankful that we had to go out for dinner, otherwise we would have missed this traditional Japanese event.
Obon Odori (お盆 盆踊り) is one of the summer festivals in Japan. Obon is the Buddhist tradition of honoring the dead and it involves Odori or dancing. Most of the participants (basically our neighbors) were wearing their summer kimonos.
It’s a good time for neighbors to bond as well.
We dropped by the Obon Odori when we were on our way out. Later, laden with heavy purchases from the grocery, we were able to catch the last part of the Odori for a (very) short video.
Happy weekend everyone!
Hanabi, or the Fireworks Display is one anticipated event here in Japan. Yes sure we’ve all seen fireworks every now and then. But there’s nothing quite like the Japanese Hanabi – especially if you consider that these continuous pyrotechnic lasts an hour at the least, with some lasting for two full hours! And it’s not just the length mind you, the organizers go to lengths as to provide displays that can just make you smile real wide like a kid even when you’ve been to countless hanabi in the summer, every summer.
This year though, the hanabi has been more a treat as compared to the previous years. A lot of the usual hanabi events had been called off this year, both as sign of mourning over the March 11 disaster and as cost-cutting as well. But of course, there’s still reason to rejoice and probably it’s because of that that the major Hanabi in certain cities still pushed through.
Yokohama’s hanabi was held this evening. This actually was our (mine and hubby’s) first hanabi together as husband and wife. And so we spent it watching together at the 34th floor of our office where we currently are billeted (pretty ironic yes, that even when our building has 36 floors or so, we happen to be assigned on the same floor though maybe not for long since he’ll be moving to another floor next month for another project). And yes, we were working overtime.
Here’s some of the pictures I’ve taken. Totally unedited (still trying to get to know our new gadget).
