Misawa Summer Festival

The Misawa Summer Festival is a four day celebration, which takes place at the end of August. The festival consists of a drumming competition and a ton of parades to include: costume, traditional Bon dance, Mikoshi, and two float parades. The parade route either started or ended right outside the Main Gate entrance to Misawa AB, which is super convenient for all of the base-dwellers (such as ourselves). We could park our cars at the shopping center on base and walk right out the gate to enjoy and take part in the festivities. Eric and I ended up getting to see all but the drumming competition, which is definitely on our list of things to do next year after hearing the drumming in the parade. The competition would certainly have been pretty amazing to see.

I did some googleing to try to understand what exactly the festival is celebrating. I couldn't find the history of the Misawa Summer Festival itself, but could find some information on the different parades.

During the Bon dance parade, (what seems like) hundreds of dancers dressed in light-weight kimonos perform the traditional Bon dance down the street. Bon dance is a style of dancing performed during Obon (a Japanese Buddhist holiday). Obon is a family-reunion type of holiday during which families commemorate their ancestors by visiting graves, making food offerings, and guiding the spirits of their ancestors home by hanging lanterns outside their homes. At the end of Obon, lanterns placed in bodies of water float away guiding the spirits back to the spirit world. This celebration has been observed in Japan for over 500 years. Bon dancing (which is called Bon Odori) was traditionally meant to welcome the spirits of the dead, but over the years has come to be associated with summer. Dances and music differ from region to region, but the dance is always performed in unison by the dancers. (Props to Wikipedia- a very reliable source- for lots of this information...to be fair, I cross-referenced it with other sources and with information given by our tour guide during our cultural briefing).

 

The Mikoshi parade is a parade of mini-shrines. The shrines are believed to transport and temporarily house deities. There were only a handful of Mikoshi during the parade at the Misawa Summer Festival, but it was interesting to see that at least one of the was made to resemble a cartoon character, which makes me wonder what kind of deity it housed... The people carrying the Mikoshi bounced the mini-shrines up and down, spun them around in circles, and tilted them from side to side. Wikipedia (again) tells me that this is done to give the deity a thrill. Well, the deity wasn't the only one getting a thrill, the crowd loved it and it seemed like the people carrying the shrines were having a great time, too!

The Mikoshi are carried by the beams.

So far I have not been able to find much specific information on the floats in terms of their history or what they are meant to represent. They were huge, beautiful, and elaborate. Each float appeared to be themed and each float also carried a large drum (played by an adult drummer) and a line of smaller drums (played by children). The drummers as well as those pulling the float sang and chanted along with the drums. Some people walking in the parade played flutes. The sound was as beautiful as the floats. Eric and I thoroughly enjoyed this parade, but were dying to know more about what was going on. During the parade it became obvious that Misawa is a small, close-knit community as people participating in the parade jumped out from time to time to greet and chat with people observing the parade.

As the float parade started, I felt myself getting a little emotional. I don't know if it was the beauty of what we were witnessing, the fact that the drumming and singing reminded me of pow-wow, the hormones, or the fact that I was feeling just so fortunate to have the unique opportunity to live in and be part of such an entirely different culture from our own. It was probably a combination of all the above, but Eric and I commented all night about how lucky and happy we are. We have to keep pinching ourselves to remind us that this is our real life. We don't intend to take any of it for granted. We grinned ear-to-ear throughout the entire parade. Here are some pictures of the beautiful floats...

 

Of course no festival is complete without great fair food. Eric and I walked around and checked out all there was to offer. Later, in a google-sesh about traditional Japanese fair food, we learned that all the fair-food superstars were available at the Misawa festival. Eric ate a lot of (and loved) Takoyaki, which you can read about here, but are basically octopus fritters. We tried two different types. One I would describe as the mass-produced, fast food version (octopus chunks were smaller), and one I would describe as the handmade, legit version (large octopus chunks). I preferred the smaller chunks of tentacles, Eric the larger ones. We sampled various other delicious fair foods, but got too full to try it all. Now we have a list of must-try's for next time!

After the float parade ended, Eric and I popped into a liquor store to check out the selection. They sold beers individually at this store so you could piece together a custom six-pack (or more). They had a lot of really unique beers and Eric got a couple to take home and sample. I stood there and whimpered. But the highlight of the trip was really this, which I am considering purchasing specifically for the purpose of a table centerpiece. I think it would really help future guests feel at ease in our home... what do you think?

Who doesn't like snakes in their liquor?

Cheers!