Last weekend, Nagoya held its annual festival. The Nagoya Festival is Nagoya’s largest autumn festival. The main attraction is its parade, but there are also other events all over town, and on the Sunday, many local tourist attractions (such as Nagoya Castle) had free entry.
It was a beautiful day on Sunday, so I decided to walk from my apartment to City Hall (Shiyakusho) where the Dashi (float) parade was beginning. On the way I passed by a shrine I had never visited before, The Tanabata Shrine:
…and also passed through Meijo Park, which was starting to feel autumnal, and by Nagoya Castle.
☆★☆
☆★☆
It was nice to see so many families out and about, and I wasn’t surprised to see streams of people going into Nagoya Castle, making the most of the free entry.
When I reached City Hall I was a little surprised to see quite so many people waiting for the parade to begin. It was really crowded, but I made my way into the throng of people. I soon realised why there was such a big crowd – the parade was being opened and led by the Mayor of Nagoya, Mr. Takashi Kawamura. From what I can gather, he’s quite a popular figure, and everyone seemed to be clamouring to take his picture or shake his hand! Naturally, I joined in, and took a couple of photos…
One thing that really impressed me about the start of the parade, was that some announcements and explanations of events were given in English! I’ve never heard that at a festival before, and I was quite surprised. I felt happy to be welcomed to Nagoya in such a way, and felt that the city was really making its best efforts to be international.
The Dashi Parade consisted of traditional dashi (floats) which have puppets on top of them, which keep the crowd entertained. I’ve seen these kind of floats before, but I’m always quite entertained by the puppets and amazed at how heavy they look when they are being moved.
☆★☆
☆★☆
☆★☆
☆★☆
I followed the parade along for a while and then when I reached Hisaya-odori Park I turned off and started exploring some of the other festival attractions. In Sakae I caught a bit of the Kagura Float Parade:
…and the Children’s Mikoshi Parade:
Hisaya-odori Park runs right through the centre of Nagoya’s downtown area. The whole park seemed to be taken over with various festival activities. I walked the length of the park, collecting fliers and some free samples of things, and stopped a few times to take in the entertainment. At one point I stopped near the stand advertising the Nagoya Aquarium. Here, after a little hesitation, I held a little turtle!!
It was very solid and wet, kind of scary, but kind of cute!
One of my main reasons for going to the festival was to catch some live music. In particular, I wanted to catch a band called Semi On, who I sort of know through my Japanese school.
After getting some lunch from one of the festival food stalls (jagga butter, of course!), I grabbed a kakigori to cool me down and went to find a sport near the stage where Semi On would be appearing later. Here, I watched a bizarre array of entertainment!
First, I saw Latin Dance Carnival which was, I think, a local dance school specialising in Latin dance. They performed various dances, including tango, flamenco, belly dance, samba, salsa (I think – it was all in Japanese!), but the most ‘interesting’ of all was some kind of Spanish dancing (I think) led by what I assume was a native Spanish guy…
I don’t want to be too mean, but some of his moves were very… curious! 
After the dancing, there was a great Japanese local band called theSing2YOU (I copied their spelling from the flier – I hope it’s correct!).
Sorry the video quality isn’t that great – they were much better than this! I’d like to find out more about them but can’t seem to find them online… 
The lead singer had a really great voice – very powerful for someone who seemed so cute and tiny!
And I have to say, the drummer guy had a great smile he kept beaming out into the audience! 
Next came cheerleading! They were young, but pretty good, and they coped well when they made mistakes a couple of times they missed a jump or dropped someone!).
After the cheerleading, we were treated to a trip to Hawaii, sort of! It seems the Marriott Hotel is having some sort of massive Hawaii promotion, the Spirit of Aloha Tour, and they came to Nagoya to promote Hawaiian tourism. This section of the entertainment was so popular I was quite surprised! Suddenly there were so many people watching the show and, when it was over, most of them left! What was most amazing was that when the people on stage asked who had been to Hawaii a LOT of people raised their hands! It was good listening practice for me, as all of the speaking was done in Japanese, and I could follow a lot of it. One of the reasons this segment was so popular, I think, was that it had a special celebrity guest star I didn’t realise who he was until after the event though – oops! The event seems to be being presented by Konishiki Yasokichi, former sumo wrestler and Hawaiian-born-Japanese, AKA “The Dump Truck”.
You can see a short video clip of the event on the Marriott site, and if you look really carefully I think you can see me at the end! Haha! Here’s a video clip from the Saturday performance, including the very catchy song they sang:
I learnt from this that in Hawaii we say ‘aloha’, ‘mahalo’, ‘a hui hou’ (‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘goodbye’)… and that there are many Hawaii-otaku here in Nagoya by the looks of things!!
See all those old ladies’ hands? They’re not making the ‘rock’ sign – it’s some kind of ‘a hui hou’ sign! Haha!
Actually, I have to confess, after this show I really wanted to go to Hawaii and couldn’t stop imagining myself lying on the beach under a palm tree, drinking a Blue Hawaiian and eating macadamia nut chocolates!
Finally, after all of the excitement of Hawaii had passed, Semi On were on…
I really love this song and only wish I’d had a better video camera (this was taken on my cell phone!). After this they sung “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”, which was just awesome!
☆★☆
☆★☆
And then I went home!
It was a great day, and just what I needed! I’m aware that I missed a lot of the parade stuff, feudal lord stuff, samurai stuff, but I wanted live music and sunshine, and I got just that, so I was happy!
Amazing to think I got sunburnt on Sunday and then there was a typhoon on Thursday, huh?
