Trip Pictures #3

Hey everybody! More trip pictures, but first I wanted to say that I was able to fix the last post, so if you wanted some context on the pictures of me eating various things, now you can read all about it.  Don't worry, I have more pictures of me eating things for those interested, but today is about a matsuri.

 

Here we are getting ready to go to Gaina Matsuri, Yonago's biggest festival.  Matsuri translates roughly to festival, and Gaina is Yonago dialect for big.  It's traditional for women to wear yukatas and men to wear jimbeis to festivals, which is what we were doing. The vast majority of people just wear their everyday clothes, but you'll generally see people dressed like this at any sizable matsuri. I bought the jimbei for pretty cheap and she already had the yukata. I opted not to buy geta, the traditional wooden sandals because they're not exactly useful or comfortable, while I can sleep in a jimbei. Women sort of get the short end of the stick here because jimbeis are basically just two part robes that are very comfortable, but Mie couldn't even get into hers without assistance because the belt mechanism is so complex.

 

Here are Mie's older sister and her kids, Misato (girl) and Tetsuya (boy). Misato decided to dress up, too, and I think it suits her, though apparently it was pretty tight. They're wearing the traditional crocs, if you can't tell.

 

And here is (for the time being) my only picture of the actual festival.  Generally festivals look a lot like you would expect, with tons of people selling festival food and drink. There are also usually taiko performances and other stuff like that. This picture shows a thing that is unique to Gaina, though, which is a sort of balancing contest.  It's hard to see, but that's a giant pole with lanterns hanging off it, and the people in the street there are trying to balance it. They balance it on their heads and hands and necks and all sorts of things, increasing the height of the thing every time they manage to balance it. It's pretty impressive.

Ok, so that is pretty much it for the festival stuff. Time to get back to research, I guess.