handa city festival

My Nova branch is located in a small city called Handa and since I started there I have been told about the Handa Festival. Every five years, the city has a 2 day festival where they parade 31 handcrafted floats down the main street of town. Now, being a native Louisianian when you tell me parade and floats, I get a certain idea in my head. This was nothing like that. These floats are about 2 stories tall and are carved out of wood with huge embroidered tapestries draping over the sides. They are adorned with red tassels, lanterns and traditional Japanese pictures. Each float has a small stage at the front for a puppet show, which they performed at the end of their parade down the road. They are not motorized, but build upon wooden wheels. In order to move, crews of young men dress up in traditional Japanese outfits and tow the floats down the street with ropes. There are about 30 men in each crew, one of whom runs around yelling and sometimes hitting the others to get them excited. And so we spent the day and all 31 floats paraded down the street.






Brandon, Yuika, Ryan and I walked around Handa and drank Asahi while I should have been at work. We dressed up in Japanese clothes and admired the line of Japs lined up for the Vinegar Museum! (yes, y’all…a museum for vinegar. Apparently that’s a point of pride for Handa). There was amazing food: Tacoyaki (octopus bread balls), Sobayaki (grilled soba noodles), squid on a stick, Yakitori and Yakiniku (meat or chicken on a stick) and others lining the streets. I tried Yuika’s favorite fair food and was less than impressed: octopus flavored cracker folded in half with egg, soba, sauce and mayonnaise in it. Yuck…proof that “When in Rome” does not always work out well. The floats gathered in a large stadium by the hospital and each crew performed a puppet show. One that Yuika told us about was the story of a man who saved a magic turtle. As a reward he gained entrance into a sea kingdom. While it was difficult to understand the stories, the overall experience was unreal. This is one little, tiny city in the middle of nowhere Japan and it has such pride in its history. Its pretty remarkable to realize how old the world is and how vast.