Mino Matsuri

For some reason it’s a thing in Japan for most towns to be famous for something. Ogaki (the city Tom works in) is famous for making the wooden boxes you drink sake out of, and Gifu (where we live) is famous for an ancient type of fishing using cormorants. Each town also tends to hold an annual festival where they celebrate the thing they are famous for, which means more fun experiences for us!

Last weekend we went to a festival in a nearby town called Mino which is famous for Mino washi, a special type of paper that’s used to make traditional Japanese lanterns and fans. Similarly to most Japanese festivals, people were dressed up and paraded large Shinto floats around the town while joyously dancing and consuming copious amounts of alcohol (hence the fun)! However, Mino added its own local flair to the traditional parade by hand making hundreds of strands of pink cherry blossoms from Mino washi which they then attached to each float!

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The men carried around the heaviest floats which they sporadically spun and thew up and down in the air as they paraded through the streets. Each float appeared to have 1 or 2 designated sake distributors, who would continually hold up a wooden barrel with a spout to the men's mouths as they continues along the parade route to help their enthusiasm and perceived strength!

One guy even offered some to Tom as they went passed!

The constant drinking made the float carrying louder, more entertaining and possibly easier for the participants, except for the few who became unable to help carry anymore and instead needed to lean on the float to help them remain standing!

It’s pretty common in Japanese festivals for only men to be allowed to carry the floats, but here the women of Mino carried the first float in the parade, proving that they too are hard core enough to carry around a 1 tonne float while dancing and downing sake!

The children carried their own mini-floats too! 

Until they got tired of it!

These small town festivals are so much fun as a bystander, I can’t even imagine how much fun it must be to be involved in one in your own community! Luckily it's the start of the festival season! But we need to prepare ourselves because that means, summer is coming...