Mikawhere?: murakami matsuri 村上祭り

Two years ago I went to the Murakami matsuri with my mom and had a great time. This year I had the chance to participate thanks to Naomi and one of student's parents. We pulled the oshagiri with Oomachi 大町 . Only the Murakami festival's shrines are called oshagiri which I think means big wheel. Each of the older areas in the city have an oshagiri and I think there were 19 in total. Our happi were a slightly older version of the ones that everyone else was wearing but they welcomed us with open arms. We had actually woken up at 3 in the morning to see the start of the festival which had Kubouta machi pulling their oshagiri at a run through the streets. It was quite a site but I think some of Oomachi's men had started imbibing at that time and were already drunk by the time we joined them at 8:00.

The morning Oomachi crew

We were a bit behind but started drinking almost as soon as we joined them!

Initially we were just pulling the rope in front but we were soon given the honour of doing the hard work pulling in the yoke and it was pretty hard work. They sang a song as they pulled where the leader would sing and then they all would sing in response. I learned a bit but it was pretty hard to discern. Whenever we stopped for a traffic light or short break we put the yoke down and sang a different song to the beat of our claps.

Along the way we were pulled into people's houses for beer, food, and relief from the sun. We were something of celebrities and the people were incredibly generous. Some of the houses along the route were very old, as Murakami was a castle town, and still had non-flushing (outhouse style) toilets.

Me and some of the afternoon crew. These guys are the ultimate in style here. They would probably be called Ikkeman which pretty much mean sexy, good-looking and cool. They were all too young for me though! Besides the old guy on the left :).

Their happis all have their names printed on them, it is something they do every year!

Ruu and Futoshi popped by and by that time we were sweaty and sun burnt so we decided to say goodbye to Oomachi and get in a few hours nap.

After our nap we headed over to Ruu's parents house where Ruu did our hair and her aunt (a kimono teacher) dressed us in our Yukata.

Ruu's aunt is telling her how to stand!

Then we went out again to sample the delicious festival food and watch the oshagiri light up for the night.

Met some other Murakami peeps there

Apparently this is a big no no. When you are wearing a yukata you are suppose to be prim and proper and never show your legs but...mine were sweating streams so I didn't care!