It's Matsuri Season!

              Matsuri are festivals, and they can range to simply celebrating summer, the return of ancestor’s souls to the family home, various Shinto and Buddhist spirits, martyrdom, phallus, and snow. The majority seem to take place during the summer, a time of bounty and nauseating humidity.

              My friend Lena in Tokyo invited me to come with her to a Bon-Matsuri next to Tsukiji (the famous fish market). Bon, in this case, simply refers to the dance that usually accompanies O-bon, aforementioned festival of ancestral spirits. Of course, we saw this as less of dance-off and more of an excuse to dress in yukata and eat some tasty vendor food.

             Now, I’ve worn a yukata before, but I always have trouble with tying the sash and making it look proper. Too bad I’m so tall and they were designed for short people, so I normally can’t make the quintessential waist fold. Oh well. We managed to wrangle ourselves in, then put our brave faces on while navigating public transportation and getting stared at left and right for being two weird blonde chicks with obvious crises of identity.

              Once we got to the temple courtyard however, all nervousness and cries of agony along the lines of ‘My body wasn’t built for these clothes!’, ‘I’m sweating like a whore in church’ and ‘My yukata/obi looks lumpy!’ vanished. No one cared. And there were tons of people around anyway.

              Apparently, it was cool to dress up in cosplay outfits too. I thought the guy working a beer stand was just a very poorly disguised transvestite, but apparently he was some normal-ish anime character. I heard the organizers didn’t care if you cross dressed, so long as you came out to enjoy the fun.

              Of course, I had to let my inner 10 year old get a picture with pikachu and Ash Ketchum…After some guy from the news saw the crazy blonde duo, swooped in and started taking our photos.

              In the center of the courtyard was a stage decorated with lanterns, taiko drummers and dancers. Lena and I started chatting with an elementary school girl, who thought we must be half since we could speak her language (I don’t even…What? I don’t look remotely Asian!), and we all agreed to wobble our way through the dance. It was ridiculous, mortifying, exhilarating and an absolute blast.

              As Lena and I were leaving, a group of grannies commented on how nice we looked in our yukata. Their surprise when we told them, yes, we did wrangle ourselves into them, was very cute. We walked away with a sense of accomplishment: if the grannies say nice things to you, you have been successful!

Taiko, lanterns and dancing!