TARGET 091223

Misawa, Japan's Annual City Parade

Well, you may have been expecting a Christmas-themed target this week, but if you let that pollute your session, then hopefully, you will learn something good about how to handle such "expectiation" pollution. So when will hou get a Christmas themed target? Well, maybe next summer. (How's that for setting you up with some pollution!)

My family and I were stationed in Japan for four years, and one of the favorite events was the annual city parade. It is a four-day event, celebrating harvest, life, and mainly just letting people have a formal four days of celebrating.

Misawa city’ s annual four-day summer festival lasted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22. The parade route snakes through the downtown district, on “White Pole Road,” and passes American Park in front of Misawa Air Base.

The event we liked best was the parade, held on gthe third day of the festival. The picture above shows the women's portion of the parade which is held on that day. There are loudspeakers placed all along the parade route, playing music. Because the music is playing at the same time along the entire route, you can move out into the middle of the street (it is allowed, for taking pictures), and look at the kilometer-long ( roughly a half-mile) line of approaching dancers, who are all participating in a perfectly syncronized dance. I have never seen a single one of the hundreds of dancers be even slightly out of step with everyone else.

In the picture above, all of the women are wearing the same kimonos. Each company or group within the city has its own special pattern for their kimonos. It is the most colorful portion of the parade, in many ways, even more colorful than the floats.

The male portion of the parade is almost as impressive....


...with displays of martial arts skills from the various dojos around the city.


Nowadays, there are always modern additions for the children. Shown here is "Picachu", a Japanese cartoon character....


.....who, in spite of the obvious American influence, still fascinates the Japanese children as much as he does children around the world. Who knows? A child's admiration for heroes who battle for right against wrong, no matter their national origin, may just be one of our greatest cultural exchanges.


In traditional Japanese style, most of the floats are carried by humans, and not motorized. This can often result in some weird situations.......


.....especially when they are "helped" by Americans from Misawa Air Base, who are always invited to participate in the parade, and are always glad to do so. The "JAFC" you see on the back of the porters stands for the Japanese Self Defense Forces, the Japanese troops to whom the Misawa Air Base belongs, and who share the base with the U.S. forces.


The larger floats, however, are motorized, and lit from inside to glow brightly for the night-time portion of the parade, which goes on well after dark.

FEEDBACK MAP

For more information on the Misawa Annual Parade and the four-day long series of festivities, see the following web sites:

Traveling Tengco Blogspot , to whom we own a debt of gratitude for these wonderful photographs.