Last month in Nagasaki City, there was a big Lantern Festival for the Chinese New Year. Nagasaki was one of the first porting towns in Japan to let foreigners in for trade and such so they celebrate diverse cultural events. The Lantern Festival here is famous and I believe, it is the biggest in Japan.
We checked it out on one of the nights and it was crazy! There were crowds of people at the events and walking around town. We tried to watch a dragon dance, but we only got small peeks because of the crowd. It was kind of overwhelming! But very cool.
The dragon dancers were very good, but the craziest part was the announcer and the music. Everything was just so loud and festive and repetitive. It's hard to explain, but it just felt really surreal. The announcer would yell out to the crowd, "Who wants more?! Do you want to see the dance again? Cheer if you want to see it again!" And then crazy chimes and gongs would follow. Madness!
I wanted to see more of the lanterns, but we did bump into the adorable Totoro lantern in the outdoor mall. Isn't he cute?
We also met up with some friends for dinner and coincidentally, the tables next to us were having a wedding after party. It was all these rowdy friends of the couple playing party games and drinking. Scott decided to take some pictures of them. The couple was kind enough to pose for him!
1 comment:
Totoro lantern? mannn that's awesome, i definitely didn't see that one.
Post a Comment