More Akita Kanto Festival

Some more photos from the Akita Kanto Festival team visiting the big Furusato Matsuri at Tokyo Dome last year. Accompanying the team was of course musicians, including taiko drummers. These are photos from the parade as the poles and lanterns are carried around the arena. At the Furusato Matsuri (meaning the “home town festival”) famous festivals from all over Japan take turn entertaining the audience, when I was at the festival it was this team from Akita prefecture, and also Awaodori dancers from Tokushima prefecture and dancers from Okinawa in the south. It is held every year in January, over several days in the huge Tokyo Dome arena. Recommended!

Shiraume Taiko Drummers

The few holidays after New Year’s is vital to Tokyo’s shopping districts and department stores do their best to lure customers with sales, bargain bags and performances! La Foret, one of the premier youth fashion department stores in the world put up this performance by the Yushima Tenjin Shiraume Taiko group (湯島天神白梅太鼓), which has to be one of the most beautiful taiko drum groups in the world! It was packed with people already before they started but somehow I managed to wriggle my way to the front where I crouched down (so as not to bother the people behind me) and go these pictures. They were just as fantastic as they look!

Iroha – Taiko Kids

I saw these two wonderfully cute little wadaiko (taiko) drummers in Mishima in the middle of last month. They performed as a mixed group of local taiko groups and drummers from some towns in Miyagi prefecture that are trying to rebuild themselves. It was an excellent perfumers. I love how these two just look so professional before going on stage. I wish I could be this cool!

Nagashima Yakumo Jinja Reitaisai

Every summer Tokyo is full of festivals. In a city of over 12.5 millions it’s only to be expected that you can’t find all of the festivals. I have been here over a decade and still there are festivals I have never even heard of passing by every week, even if I make a point of seeing them I end up missing them several years in a row. It’s difficult to even find information about them, so I guess I was just lucky to be told by someone who knew someone who had head about the little known and very local festival in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward, just next to Chiba prefecture, near Kasai Station on the Tozai subway line. The Nagashima Yakumo Shrine festival (長島八雲神社例大祭) is so unknown that even the festival captain, a big, bald, handsome man with an even bigger and friendlier personality picked me out in the crowd of the out of towners who had come to look, all two of us! I really hadn’t expected to find such a local festival right in Tokyo so I was very pleasantly surprised! These photos are from near the end of the festival when the three omikoshi gathers at the shrine for the final ceremony. Accompanied by an expert but all to brief performance by a small all female taiko drummer troupe. I think there must be a lot of seriously beautiful people in Kasai! But the final event was even more interesting, on stage we were suddenly greeted by Mr. Kurita Kanichi (栗田貫一) who is not only a famous comedian and talented singer (well, most Japanese are actually pretty good singers) but also the voice actor of one of the most famous classic anime shows in the history of Japanese television: Lupin the Third! How lucky am I!? I think he must be a local celebrity lending a bit of glamour to the festival.

Finding these minor festivals is really fun and if you know of any good places to visit around Tokyo or even farther away please email me at the name of the blog @ gmail.com!