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Tonami Yotaka Festival
In June, I visited the Yotaka Festival
that has been running over 300 years in Tonami, Toyama prefecture. It is held on Friday and Saturday of the
second week in June every year. This
year, the festival was held on 10 and 11 June, 2016. We find this festival extremely impressive with the dazzling
lanterns floats and the collision of the floats.
There are 15 big floats and 5 small
floats representing the different parts of Tonami in the festival. All floats are decorated with colourful
lanterns marked with their names.
However, the main attraction is not the beauty of the lanterns but the
collision of two lanterns to express members’ courage and bravery towards the
opposing floats. The collision started
from 8:30 p.m. as the streets were packed with people standing to wait to the
see the ‘main theme’ of
the night. Every time, we heard each team shouting loudily ‘Iyaiyasha’ several
times before collision. This brought
them energy and team spirits and we could feel the same as audience.
It is the first time for us to experience
the passion of the locals presenting their own culture via the festivals. It is definitely an exiting and interesting
festival that you cannot miss if you visit Toyama prefecture in June!!
Please visit the below website for more
information:
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