August 28, 2008

Taiko and Tubetops

Raiden is a festival for the man and women in all of us, respectively. Every year, the people of Mie-Machi in Oita-Ken reenact the spirit of man and spirit of woman coming down from their two mountains to yell at each other. Its a celebration of the two sexes and is a splendid festival that involves a lot of taiko, dancing, and glowing floats. It occured at the tail end of summer in the month of August.

August 18, 2008

Mou Sugu!

I have been busy since my arrival in Japan, setting up utilities, getting a car, remodeling my aparment, going to work everyday, and I didn`t even have internet until last week so updates have been nonexistant. But I have gone to 3 festivals, 3 cities (haha I called them cities) in my prefecture of Oita, and had my share of drinks. Luckily I have been able to bring my camera to pretty many of the events and will be editing the footage and collecting the photos soon. As a teaser , let me tell you about one of the festivals called Raiden. It involves the people/spirits of the town coming down from Man mountain and Women mountain to face-off against each other, which amounts to a bunch of women in tube tops and men without shirts chanting and getting all hot and bothered to the beat of taiko drums. Yeah, It was fun (+-~)