August has not been good to my wallet as festival season came along like a bus. The net result of this is a sudden loss of internet at home, so despite all the interesting things that have happened, I cannot write anything about it! Thank god for short moments in Internet cafes.

Anyway, the festival season is upon us, both the modern music sort and the traditional. The end of Obon heralds the start of Natsu-matsuri (Summer Festivals) to see us through the remaining steamy days of summer before the cool of Autumn sets in. Festivals take a number of guises although they typically involve a parade of a float from the local temple, dances and many food stalls. Occasionally however there will be a festival that takes a more interesting form, like Koenji’s Awa-Odori, held on the 23-24 August.

The Awa-Odori is a long parade of dancing by 188 groups around the streets of the Tokyo suburb. Featuring 12000 dancers, it is the second largest of its kind in Japan and attracts over 100 000 visitors who line the streets with beer, food and a carnival mood even, as evidenced this year, with the rain falling heavy on our heads.

The festival began at 5pm, although my friend and I got to Koenji at 6:30 – after getting lost on the train somewhere around Kichijoji first. We were shepherded down a street parallel to the festivities; an agonising position as the music and shouting could be clearly heard a mere street away all the while we were being led away from the parade. Thankfully the police were pretty ineffectual at stopping people go down roads with ‘no entry’ signs. Their attempts at preventing us went as far as shouting ‘Hairimasen!’ with no follow up. A quick dodge of the police and we had found our spot among the umbrellas with a clear view of the dancers.

The groups shouting to the drumbeat danced along the street – some more energetically than others – in a deeply traditional Japanese style. There was something wonderfully tribal about it, so very entrenched in tradition that for a moment the modern world of Japan was forgotten in a whirl of colourful yukata and enacted stories of demons and gods. It amused us to watch both the spectators letting their hair down with beer and singing and the dancers jump around despite the rain. We wondered how many were salarymen, how many were gals, how many were obaasan… the usual boring and restrained characters put aside for one night as the community got together.

Each group had similar dress, with happi coats for the men and women who led the groups with dancing that skated over the road and then the ladies in yukata. Some of these yukata were stunning, resembling a sakura tree in bloom or gentle colours that reminded one of a tropical beach. Their hair was intricately held up with sparkling hair pieces and atop their head, a curious wicker hat that reminded me of the Gelupka sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Their dancing style, with elegant precise hand movements and feet that tottered on tiptoes in lacquered geta contrasted starkly with the violent movements of the other dancers, so much that as the other dancers moved between the women, it was like a fire dancing dangerously close to a delicate fire.

We watched the dancing for two hours before the rain got to us and we headed indoors for some food. While the Awa-Odori reminded us of summer, the cold rain was distinctly Autumnal and ramen (from a Chinese restaurant no less) was required before we joined the crush for the train home.

My small town had a Matsuri recently too, over the weekend when I had to work. It was fascinating watching them set up for it, building stages and collecting floats near the station but I was sad not to see it. Maybe next year.