7000 person festival

I just recently returned from Sapporo Orientation and it was truly a great experience. For me to get to Sapporo it's quite the effort, just as it is for many of my fellow JETs in here in Hokkaido.

I left for the Sapporo Orientation on August 15th (sunday). This also happened to be the same day as the 7000 person festival in Shihoro. I had a wonderful time participating in the festival. Days leading up to the workers and towns people volunteer to make the long long sticks of washi paper flowers that I showed on my previous post, well this festival was the reason for all the hard work. 

My train was scheduled to depart around 2:00pm, which meant that I was able to participate for a little bit in the festival. What I did was join in on carrying a shrine on my shoulders and marching it around. Here are some pictures.

The weather wasn't exactly the best for the event, but they still managed to get a couple of people on to the Hot Air Balloon... unfortunately i was not one of those people.

This is the area where the festival took place. The pink things you see in the background are the "Hana Mikoshi" that me and a bunch of guys will be carrying our shoulders... There's two of them, the smaller one of the "mikoshi's" is for the kids to carry around.

The mayor to the right in a picture with, what I can assume to be important people... All the people in Shihoro are important!!!

I am somewhere underneath the big pink mess trying my best to help carry the big heavy box. It was surprisingly heavy even with the number of people we had carrying it.

That's me trying to look useful... unfortunately in the beginning I wasn't helping much at all. I was too short for the wooden beams to reach my shoulders, but I still managed to do what I could to help.

Some of the guys I became friends with while carrying the massive box. A bunch of real cool guys. Notice... my extremely short shorts... Yeah, imagine my face when I was handed my gear and they said, "change..."

A wonderful panoramic of the dancers dancing in large large circle surrounding the entire area. It was pretty cool, I could only get a 180 Panoramic shot.

Soon after carrying the "hana mikoshi" I changed back into my own clothes. It was great to wear my own shorts and not shorts that made me feel like I had Daisy Dukes on...

I walked around the festival a bit looking at all the cool stands and I had to hurry home to finish packing for my trip to Sapporo for Orientation.

To see what happens next tune into the next Lonely Island Video Blog.