Being in Kyoto, you really cannot escape the atmosphere of Gion Festival! This year, I totally didn't have any plan to join 'Yoi Yama' at all, but just like last year, I ended up being there for 2 night during the festival!
I originally intended to go to Osaka to join Dotombori Festival this evening. But according to my friend, there wasn't much there to see, so we decided to moved the whole plan over to Yoi Yama instead. I ended up digging my Yukata (Japanese Summer kimono) out from my closet, iron it and put it on for the second time. It is always a challenge to get dressed up in that dress by yourself. It wasn't too bad for the dress, but for Obi (the belt), I still had to rely on a how-to-guide from the search engine. Thanks to the digital world! Jill and I finished dressing, making up and hair doing within an hour and headed out to catch a train to town. We met pChoi by accident along the way, so we tagged along together.
The senrioka house members and pOat and pChu were already in Karasuma waiting for us. We grabbed quick food and joined them walking around for a little bit. Man... there were LOTS of people. But in fact, I think it was much less than what I expected and it was definitely less than last year when Jill and I came. We strolled around waiting for pTaew and pTum who came from Osaka, then started walking through back streets in between Karasuma Shijyo - Sanjyo area seeing some of those floats used for the Gion parade. I think the fun feel of this event is to get dressed up in Yukata and walk around seeing kids enjoying the plays and people buying street food (and of course us taking pictures!) If you don't know the history of each floats, it really doesn't make any different seeing how many of them. They all simply look the same to us! =P
We walked a whole lot around there, then the senrioka members except Ta went home. The rest of us continued our journey toward kamo kawa riverbank to sit back and relax for a bit. The group of funky girls nearby us started playing with the fireworks. So did the guy group next to them. They were really insane setting off the fire pointing to the direction where people were sitting. A few landed right a few feet in front of us and went off right there. Guess we were really cared for our safety cuz we decided to leave that place not long after that. It was a fun night, but my feets are crying for good massage!!!!!!
So I made the record for Gion Matsuri! 3 days this year for the event!!! My parents arrived Kyoto this morning, so we went to catch the hoko floats in front of Kyoto City hall. We were in time to see the last few floats, mostly the smaller ones. It was amazing seeing all the guys carry such big and heavy floats, then rotate them in a circle before continue their ways after the turns. Some of them, they made 2 twists in a row!! Must be heavy!! The highlight said for this event is to see how they make turns for the bigger and taller floats. We managed to see the last one this year. It was amazing as said!
