Tanabata Festival
It’s Tanabata again! Tanabata festival is one of those hard-to-explain Japanese festivals that sneak up on us every year and sort of signals that summer is here and the festival season is now officially open. I think one of the main reasons it’s not very famous among foreigners is because it is so targeted to kids! It is a star festival (quite unusual theme in itself I think) that along with so many other customs came from China in the mid 8th century and merged with local shinto customes. It is officially celebrated on the 7th of the 7th, every year but some towns, temples or groups prefer to follow one of the two other semi-official calenders of Japan. This is great because it means I usually have 5 days of tanabata celebrations every year! Three days around the 7th of July, and then on the other two days of the lunar calendar and the lunar-solar calender. Imagine if Christians celebrated Christmas the same way!
One of the most visible aspects of the festival are the wish-slips that people attach to bamboo stands all over the country in the days leading up to tanabata, almost every department store or town hall and most schools put these up where visitors can write their own wishes for the coming year. Since it is a star festival, tanabata has also been picked up as a Japanese alternative to the global Earth Day, and people are encouraged to turn of lights for a couple of hours at night in order to properly enjoy the stars. A great concept and I hope it becomes more popular in the near future. I have lived in Tokyo for many years but I don’t think I have seen more than a handful of the brightest stars. At least this energy conservation campaign were are enjoying now is paying off in that respect, the skies have never been more beautiful!
Here’s some of the photos I took during the early evening at a Tokyo tanabata festival. Focusing on the kids, the foods and the games. See the photo of the ramune bottles waiting to be recycled? With temperatures hitting over 30 degrees C even at night, ramune is the drink to enjoy! Also note the little guy in what at first appeared to be a yukata. A slight wardrobe malfunction revealed that it was a cleverly designed set of PJs!
Wheee!
Children! Festivals! Smiles!
Thanks! I even met a man from Michigan at that festival. You two would get along I think! (^-^)
A Michigander, eh? Wonders never cease…
Michigander! That’s a new word for me. I hope I ever get a chance to use it. (^-^) And of course I looked the term up in Wikipedia, and as usual, you start wondering off and at the end I was reading about the Keweenaw Water Trail. I love canoeing. Have you tried it out?
When I was much, much younger I did a bit of pretty lazy canoeing, on Sugar Creek in Indiana (where I lived at the time) and, later, on the Au Sable River here in Michigan.
Michigan seems to have some very nice wilderness areas. Some day maybe, I’ll get a chance to visit!
Hey pk1154 said exactly what I was thinking about
and all these ones are so lovely!!
All what I love!! Thanks !!
You know I can’t resist to your children pictures
Ramune… I like too!!
Haha… thanks Lili! I agree totally! (^-^)
Great pictures to capture the atmosphere and feeling. Tanabata is one of my favorite Japanese festivals and I almost forgot about it until I read this blog post. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Bartman! You should have been here! The last of this seaon’s main tanabata festivals are tonight…. but I won’t be able to attend any. Two days was all I managed this time around! More photos to come… (^-^)
Having lived in Sendai, Japan as a child, Tanabata was always my favorite festival…. The colorful decorations hanging from the stores were always beautiful in the eyes of a child…..of course the love story that goes along with Tanabata made the whole thing more exciting to the imaginations!
Thank you for sharing your pictures.
Thank you for the kind comment Birdie! Tanabata is even more famous in Sendai, I think it is the city in Japan where they are most serious about that festival. I sure hope they had a good one this year after all the troubles they have had. I haven’t posted my tsunami photos of Sendai, it’s too depressing to watch.
Dumb question- the ramune bottles- do they contain a certain type of drink? We had a great drink out of that bottle in Kyoto but I don’t recall any writing on it….
The blank ones you had were most likely generic soda, a lime flavoured 7-Up-ish affair, right? They are usually bottled and sold on the spot or in ramune warehouses. Then there are flavoured ones that come in any number of variations, prices and places. I think a good business idea would be to come up with local variations and sell and distribute to vendors around the country – to give each festival or area or community more of a local flavour. But then again, since the selling and bottling of festival type ramune is controlled by a certain business interest (I won’t discuss that here…) that might be impossible. Maybe in the future!
Never heard about Tanabata festival but for sure would know how to join in and enjoy in it!
Love your photography! Like the story they keep and how emotional are!
Sure you have a lot of fun there!
xx
Thanks! I do my best to stay on my feet and enjoy this city! What is the point of living somewhere if you’re not going to enjoy the place right? (^-^)
I smile at your supposition: “Imagine if Christians celebrated Christmas the same way!” Actually we do. Here in Sweden, regardless if we call us Christians or not, the period of Christmas festivities gets longer for every year.
Hi Sven! Thanks for the comment! Does that include the shopping period? (^-^) Christmas is such a loaded holiday, I think it would be good to break it up into little pieces and enjoy a day at a time, spread out over a year or so… (^-^)
I love the second picture>.<and of course I love all of them, fest pics are one of the best ones
Thanks Timi! (^-^)
I took some great pictures of kids at an American festival, and my girlfriend jokingly called me a lolicon. I’ve felt self-conscious ever since while taking pictures. Do you ever feel nervous while taking photos of people? You don’t ask everyone for permission, right?
By the way, love this site.
Taking photos of kids is both fun and rewarding (you’re more likely to get interesting photos than shooting more sedate adults), it’s also a good way to practice your camera skills, fast moving targets and all that! (^-^)
I think your girlfriend didn’t mean anything by that joke so I’d advice you to forget about it as soon as possible! I personally never hide when I take photos, I walk around in the middle of everyone and everything with my camera openly. Most often I am also alone so I like to think that I am pretty approachable if anyone wants to talk to me or see the photos I took I try to oblige. Sometimes I ask for permission, it depends on the situation, but not all the time. Sure, there are times when I get nervous for other reasons than anything to do with the camera (like when I meet someone famous or someone I admire), but doing this for many years have given me a sort of sense of when and where it is ok to shoot and under what circumstances permissions are needed and when (rarely) cameras should not be produced at all. So no, I don’t ever feel nervous about shooting ‘in itself’ these days
Technically there are times when you are allowed to shoot, but common sense dictates that you shouldn’t, i.e. beaches! 99% of the time I spend outdoors I do bring a huge whooping heavy DSLR though, even at the beach. However, I never point it at anyone, I don’t even touch the camera if there’s anyone not fully clothed in my view, old or young, male or female.
Even at the beaches, there are interesting subjects! Wind surfers, boats, wildlife (birds, washed up marine life etc.), nature and such!
Oh, and thanks for the kind compliment about the blog! (^-^)