What was Kate so excited about upon stepping out the doors of Noheji station last August 19th? Read on to find out!

Follow up:

The station was surrounded by hundreds of people dressed in yukatas as well as floats covered in big foam monsters and neon coloured decorations. Yup, it was the day of Noheji's little known and highly underrated summer festival the Gion Matsuri! Supposedly this festival is some kind of bastard child of another festival in far away Kyoto.




Later that night we headed downtown to watch the parade. The first thing to pass by were a bunch of ojisan trucks carying important local religious folks.



The mighty Rayden has not aged well. Perhaps because of the poorly lit streets, the old men in ghostly robes, and the earie silence as they passed by, the parade's beginning had a very creepy feel to it.




Soon things picked up as the floats and paraders approached. Most groups were led by one of these things.



Some people marching in the parade wore traditional Japanese robes, while others didn't.




Some creatively fused traditional japanese folklore with modern myth.



A typical float contains a group of young girl drummers, old women playing shamisen and a big elaborate diorama on top.




The floats really looked spectacular this year. How do they pay for all this stuff?



A few weeks later at work I unfortunately found out exactly how they pay for it when I found a tersely worded letter on my desk politely demanding that I cough up 3000 yen!




The spooky slow motion white nosed girls do their drumming thing.



Of course my students were everywhere, doing their piping thing.




Here's one last float for good measure. So what did Kate and I think of this years big parade? Well luckily Aomori TV was there to film the event and interviewed the two of us. Click here to see for yourself what we had to say! (Or more correctly, what Kate had to say)