Danjiri !

The Danjiri festival is a big tradition in southern Osaka. Many of the shrines in this area have special portable shrines on wooden wheels that they bring out to parade once a year. Ryota's brother Kensuke participated this year, and it really was a year-long event. In the evenings we could always hear them practicing drumming the rhythmns, and for the past few months we've heard them yelling and chanting as they practiced running through the streets.

That's the thing about Danjiri-it's not just a slow and pleasant parade. They race through the streets dragging these giant shrines, complete with drummers and flutists inside and dancers jumping around on top. There are lots of injuries, especially when they go around hairpin turns. We saw one of the dancers fall from the top and hit the pavement. We saw danjiris being tipped over and knocking down trees. And we saw kids running, dragging the line when they fell down. I thought they were crazy, because they didn't let go of the rope and got dragged along the street. But if they had let go, they would have been trampled by the others and finally run over by the shrine. So I suppose being dragged was preferrable.

Anyway it was a very fast-paced and exciting event!

Here's the live action.

The drummers and flutists that ride the shrine play out an infectious rhythmn.

This is Ken and some of his friends who live in the neighbourhood and were also pulling the Danjiri. That's Ken on the far right of this photo and in the next photo doing the muscle man pose.

Although my photos don't do it justice, the Danjiri pull at night was very pretty with paper lanterns strung up along the shrine.