Tachikawa Nebuta Festival People

Touristing in Tokyo in the summer means that you have a fairly decent chance of seeing at least a handful of festivals, especially on the weekends. Tokyo has it’s own share of huge famous festivals but even if you don’t have the time to visit the larger festivals of other parts of the country, if you are lucky, they might come to you! The famous Nebuta festival has a pretty large appearance in the western Tokyo city of Tachikawa every year, where I took these photos of locals and guests from up north handling the huge drums and paper figure floats.

To get to Tachikawa it is just a simple train ride on the central Chuo Line going straight through Tokyo, and the festival spot is a 10-15 minutes walk or a single stop on the Nambu line, to Nishikunitachi Station, and then 5 minutes walking.

Even though days are pretty long in the Tokyo summer, as the sun sets it gets harder and harder to balance the light of the floats and the people around them in your photographs. As it gets pitch black you just have to make a choice of which one to light for. Here’s a few of my favorites from the very start of the festival! Enjoy!