Nagoya Matsuri

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you guys!
I just had a bout of blogging laziness I guess.

Two weekends ago we had the Nagoya Matsuri, which, uh, was basically an excuse for us to go eat, since we didn't really make it to the festival proper.  There was a parade and it was hot and it was crowded and we just didn't really feel like it.

But the food was good!!

And we got cool hats! :B

And there was a koala shaped bounce house at the Osu part of the festival!
Remember when I talked about Osu before?  It's a big crowded shopping district around the Osu Kannon temple.  Part of the festival was there, and part of it (the parade) marched down from Shiyakusho (the city hall) to Yaba-cho (another neighborhood).  We caught up with it in Sakae.

At Osu they had festival booths set up, and street performances going on all throughout the shopping district.  Particularly they had these oiran processions, processions of these women who were court performers (I think) way back in the day.
My Japanese history is a little fuzzy, sorry.

Here's Osu Kannon temple in the day.  It's just plopped right down in the middle of the city.
also observe all the food stalls in front. Yum.

Sorry about these photos.  I didn't have my camera on Saturday when of course the procession passed right in front of me.

What I love about shopping in Osu.  Japanese are the best hipsters.
I may go back and buy this shirt.

We didn't see that much of the parade itself for the reasons stated above, but here's what we did see:

Kids from like teenage age down to like elementary school on REALLY TALL UNICYCLES

what looked like an all girl marching band, in snappy uniforms

The Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya's baseball team)!

We missed all the choreographed battles and cool stuff.

..but we shopped? XD