Nagoya Festival (名古屋まつり) Part 1

Last weekend was the Nagoya city annual festival.  It was especially important this year since Nagoya celebrated its 400th anniversary.  I had to study a lot for my language course but on Sunday I decided to go to the parade.  The parade happened throughout the main core of the city and lasted several hours.  I was standing at an intersection in Sakae which was one of 2 places where special events were happening.  There were quite a bit of people.



First, some pictures from my way to Sakae about 2 hours before the event - this is the setup in front of the Nagoya city hall (the 2nd place where the special events happened):

Police were busy closing one of the main roads where the parade was happening.  A ton of volunteers (looked like scouts or something similar) were helping out by basically holding a string barricade at the sidewalk.

The parade only moved on one side of the street so near Sakae, the other side was barricaded and used by people to stand and watch.  I started off at this location but then decided to move across the street behind that group of people for a better view.

First, the actors playing famous Nagoyan heroes/soldiers appeared and did a little introduction and dance.

I think this is the mayor of the city.

Then the parade started coming in to the intersection.  First, were a few sets of these wheeled houses that had a theatre like puppet show at the top and musicians (usually flute & drums) inside.  They were pulled by people.

The exciting part seemed to be the turning of those large (and probably heavy) wagons by man power alone.  The first four of them got turned to face opposite directions.

After they were all in place, each did a theatre performance.  I couldn't see the other ones very clearly but  this one I did see and it was pretty funny.  At some point in time, the woman puppet got a devil's mask and started to move around frantically.

Some of them had a pretty elaborate setup.

Next was a procession of various gold altars.  They were quite beautiful.

After the altars was a procession of school children carrying various interesting things:
This is supposed to be a dragon - the symbol of the local baseball team.

 The killer whale at the Nagoya Aquarium:

 Some ugly monster!

A green hamster!

 A miso katsu - a Nagoyan dish!

 Biodiversity!

 A gold dolphin - also a symbol of Nagoya (2 are on top of the Nagoya castle roof).

 Hmm.. parents had to donate beer cans for this one I guess...

These dudes were quickly moving around trying to scare people!

Some bands.

 Then a procession of some people in cars from various countries.

These girls were amazing on the unicycles.