Sakura Festival in Hitachi 桜まつり

      This post is going to prove how far behind I am on some of my blog posts, and I am sorry that it has taken me so long to post some of these. (Right now I have almost 30 posts of varying ages waiting as drafts.) Several months ago...

      I went to the Hitachi Cherry Blossom Festival with my dad (who paid me a surprise visit). Hitachi, like the company - for those of you who know electronics well. The whole city's economy was based around the company and it became an incredible city. Unfortunately it looks like a crippled and slightly neglected city now because of the market crash. The two phenomenal attractions that it still has is its scenic location (directly between the sea and the mountains (the train depot overlooks the beach) and the dozens of cherry trees. and the cherry trees attract hundreds of visitors when they are in season because there is something unabashedly breathtaking about  cherry trees (as I discussed in my previous post).
        Like a craft show in the states, people wander up and down the main street playing games and buying food and purchasing hand crafted novelties. Most often, festival food is fried, seafood, or pickled. Two of the games you could play are pictured below. In the left one you had to try to catch a fish with a net made of rice paper (much like throw the ping-pong pall in the fish bowl in that you could keep the fish in the end). The right photo shows teenage boys who purchase an incredibly hard square of gum which they must cut (using thumbtacks) into a particular shape... If you lose, the consolation prize is that you get to eat the gum.

Festivals also often feature performances. One of the major performances at this festival was a large covered cart (the one in Hitachi is 5-6 stories tall as you can see by comparing it to the building next to it). These carts vary in size drastically.  

With the help of dozens of puppeteers inside and outside of the cart, the contraption unfolds and a drama is revealed. This particular show featured a dragon, mongol, emperor, princesses, and an archer which threw arrows into the onlooking crowd. The kids loved the arrows and would race to pick them up. 

Of course, no festival seems to be complete without musical accompaniment. For the puppet show the music was primarily flute (and a relatively redundant tune at that). But for the moving of the shrines they played taiko drums. They shake the air and reverberate in the chest and make the day seem, well, festive. 

Below is a good image of how the road looked on the entire main street (which is lined on both sides with cherry trees). Here at the end of the street we watched a singing performance on the stage directly behind us. 

The Cherry Blossom Festival, what a lovely day.