Dang! We missed it!

We made a little mistake last night at we went to another hamlet in our village to attend the festival that has the oldest dance in the area, dating back centuries and passed down through the generations. We stopped at the nearest hot spring for a bath and were told that the festival was actually tomorrow. Disappointed, we set up camp (we had brought a tent and sleeping bags for Mayu's first camping experience) in the park next to the hot sping

It was a great night, it even rained, which is one of the best in-tent experiences, and we woke up late just in time to see everyone preparing at the Kitano Ten Mangu shrine for the nights festival.

The problem, however, was that the festival we *wanted* to attend was in the hamlet up the road, and that *was* last night. We thought about going to tonight's festival as well, but apparently it is just a bunch of stalls selling food outsourced to a professional "festival company" - with no connection to the locals other than that we are paying them to come here. We have decided to stay home tonight, and are kicking ourselves that we did not join the real festival last night.

Oh well, it was still fun camping, and it was probably more fun watching the villagers prepare or the festival at 6 am, than it was actually going to the festival tonight.

The photos mostly depict the preparation of the festival. There is also this photo below that shows the two wooden statues that are at the bridge to the shrine. This area has been ravaged by famine three times in the edo period. While most of us think of famine as drought (no rain) in this area it is actually too much much rain that can ruin a village. If it is too cloudy and too rainy, the crops don't get enough sun and the rivers swell up and wash away the rice fields.

This was the case many years ago, and just when everything was thought to be lost, a priest happened to be walking by and instructed them to get a large rock from the river that was threatening their barely growing rice field. He proceeded to write a prayer (or something similar) on it and told them to throw it back in the raging river. When they did so, the river somehow diverted course and their rice fields were saved.

These statues are (I think) the priest that saved the village.