Festival 1

Asakusa, Tokyo 7/10/08

The rainy season ended and the summer has arrived. In Japan this means it is a time for festivals, gatherings with various means to celebrate the season. Most are a combination of carnival booths, special food, music and dancing and are usually held at a shrine or in paper lantern decorated streets.

My first festival trip was to Asakusa Sensoji in Tokyo on a Wednesday night. It began, as I took the train from class in Nokendai, and arrived to a gathering of thousands around the Sensoji shrine. There were hundreds of booths on all sides of the shrines, selling whistles, wind chimes (These were made out of small glass bowls. I was told that their chiming sounds make Japanese feel cool in the summer heat.), plants, noodles, fish on a stick, cotton candy and kinds of strange foods. Many woman and young girls dressed in yukata (a traditional summer gown), and many made incense or money offerings at the shrines.

The atmosphere was lively, with the air of a county fair or carnival in America. Vendors were yelling, children were eating candy and all were in high spirits.


A special element of this festival was the mass selling of a plant called houzukiichi, or ground cherry. The plant’s fruit is used to make a whistle. (First one peels off the shell, and carefully pricks off the seed in the center. Then one softly pushed at the seed and softens the insides. Finally one pulls out the insides of the seed and uses its shell as a whistle. The process takes at least an hour to do correctly, and is widely enjoyed by children.) I bought a set of three for the nice lady who told me about the festival and walked on.

One moment, I stop and watched a fish booth. There one could fish for gold fish and small black fish with puffy cheeks. Using a tool that appeared as a magnifying glass with a piece of thin material instead of glass, one would scoop as many fish into a small bowl as possible (until the material broke). Then he or she would take their prizes home in a small plastic bag. It reminded me of my youth and brought nostalgia of happy times.

Another moment I watched a cook fry up a multilayered pancake meal. He slapped about twenty circles of batter onto the fryer, added some noodles, an egg, a large variety of multicolored spices, a handful of very thinly sliced meat and folded it over. Then a young woman would quickly stick it in a plastic container, add soy sauce and mayonnaise and hand it to customers with a set of chopsticks.

It eventually grew late and I headed home. I hope to go to more festivals in the future.