財田秋祭り

日本２００５年財田秋祭り2 091
Originally uploaded by Ryuugakusei.

Last weekend I partook in the local Autumn Festival. One of charming elements is that the men in each locality (I live in a town, which will soon become part of a city, but for the time being the town is divided up into 7 `neighborhoods`) get to spend two days in a row pushing a 1500 kilogram float around the town. Throughout the day, we make stops in at various festival locations. At each stop, the `pushers` of all seven floats get together, and follow a ritual of actually lifting up each float, removing the wheel base, rotating it around, and running it around the camp. At which point, the float is blessed by Shinto priests. Most of the festival injuries occur during this point. Lifting a 1500kg float with a random assembly of people is not a particularly smooth process, and for the first couple attempts, one of the corners will be dropped, sometimes throwing the `flag carriers` and the `watchman` from the float.
But... despite x-many years of seeing, and riding on motorized Oktoberfest and Christmas parade floats, having to actually lift something of that size off of the ground has given me a newfound appreciation for the `significance` of these floats/portable shrines. :D