Yanagawa Festival

Last night Lori and I went back to Yanagawa for the annual nighttime lantern festival. Once a year (for 56 years now) they honor some local guy (I have no idea who, but his picture was all over town) by decorating the canals and boats with thousands of lanterns. We didn't make a reservation for a boat so we had to view the festivities from land.

Over a hundred boats full of happy and hungry festival-goers filled the canals. Next year Lori and I hope to have enough friends to fill our boat for a dinner cruise.

Along the canal route local citizens provided cultural entertainment and set off firecrackers. The best show was a women's taiko drumming group.

I wish I'd taken a longer video. They were great! See the boats going by in the background?

An older group of ladies performed on traditional Japanese stringed instruments.

In the end there was a huge fireworks display.

We took the train home and checked out a karaoke bar in my neighborhood. It was a small place with about ten people sitting
around the bar and passing the mic around. Most of the clientele were drunk old men and in the end I'm not sure if we belonged there but it was a fun night anyhow!