Onoterusaki Shrine Festival

Last weekend was torture and heaven at the same time for us festival lovers of Tokyo. First there was the huge annual Sanja festival in Asakusa with hundreds of years of tradition and 2 million visitors. Then there was the huge Ohara Kagoshima festival in Shibuya on Sunday with a rare chance to see a genuine Kagoshima prefecture festival in Tokyo! On top of that we had the once every three year superbly local festival at the Onoterusaki Shrine in Tokyo’s Iriya district, which is actually so close to Asakusa that the omikoshi from the two completely unrelated festivals could share the same border street without any interaction. Naturally I picked the Onoterusaki festival to spend the bulk of my time, because it is the rarest and also because it is so close to the much more famous Asakusa festival there were virtually no tourists at all. I think I saw one or two on both days of the festival, other than that there were almot only locals or people actually involved in the festival procession itself. In other words, Fantastic and just the kind of festival I am always looking out for. Here’s some photos of one of the omikoshi “docking” near the shrine on the first day of the festival. Many more to come!