A couple of weekends ago I visited the massively fun Yoshiwara Gion Matsuri, in Shizuoka prefecture’s Fuji City. Like last year’s festival it was huge fun, from morning to midnight and I enjoyed ever second of it. I took these photos near the end of it, following the wonderfully decorated dashi, each crewed and representing a specific neighborhood in the city. Here’s the dashi of Sumiyoshicho and some of it’s very cool looking crew. These dashi are the pride of their neighborhoods and the people take great care of them, making sure they are in top notch condition for the annual festival. I heard somewhere that a typical prize for one of these is about 300 000 USD! Later on, walking down the street I came upon a dashi-seriai (山車競り合い), which roughly translates as “dashi showdown”! I think there were 5 or 6 of them, all drawn up in a…
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SHIZUOKA GOURMET 