Tanabata is a Japanese star festival that celebrates the meeting of two gods, Orihime and Hikoboshi -- represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively (which, by the way, is how the Sendai Vegalta soccer team got their name!). According to the myth, when the two gods fell in love, they got distracted from their work. Orihime's father Tentei, the master of the universe, got mad and seperated the two gods with the milky way. One day a year, on August 7, Tentei permits the two to be together.
People generally celebrate Tanabata by writing wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on tanzaku (small pieces of paper) and hanging them on bamboo, sometimes with other decorations. The bamboo and decorations are often set afloat on a river or burned after the festival, around midnight or on the next day. This resembles the custom of floating paper ships and candles on rivers during Obon (This info from wikipedia).
The Tanabata festival was kicked off with fireworks the night before the festival started. They were some AWESOME fireworks -- all kinds of shapes, styles, and colors. Downtown was packed, but we found a great seat on a hill to watch the fireworks, which lasted for 1 1/2 hours! It was the looooongest fireworks show I've ever seen in my life!
In Sendai, the Tanabata festivities mostly take place in the Ichibancho, a covered open-air mall that stretches for 2 kilometers in downtown Sendai. The Ichibancho is lined with food, balloon, and souviner stands. People walk through the covered mall to see the beautiful and impressive decorations. In addition to decorations hanging in the Ichibancho, there are also fireworks on the eve of the festival, various musicians playing at the subway station and in a nearby park, and a small parade. There are hundreds of thousands of people squished into a comparitively small space, so it is not a good situation for people who get clostrophobic! Though it was crowded, I'm glad we got to experience it and see the beautiful decorations in person; however, I do think it is one of those things that need only to be experienced once.
 |
| Some Tanabata decorations in Ichibancho |
 |
| Kris and I standing by some Tanabata decorations |
 |
| These ones are huge and made up of thousands of tiny paper cranes, onto which prayers had been written. Can you spot Kris under the hanging decorations? |
 |
| The middle one is made up of many, tiny, folded cranes, onto which wishes have been written. |
 |
| The middle decoration close up. I wonder how long it took to fold all those and who folded them! |
 |
| Cranes weren't the only decorations used. Check out this elaborate origami! |
Many neighborhoods also have their own Tanabata celebrations. One neighboorhood we drove through had their own decorations and wishes hung on bamboo trees. Accross from MeySen, in a small park, our Kamiyagari neighboorhood was having their own little celebration.
Probably one of my favorite parts about the festival was seeing people dressed up in yukata (a kimono made out of cotton that is worn for special occassions in the summer). Until the Six Souls festival, I thought that kimono were a thing of the past or a westerner's stereotypical idea. I was delighted to find out that, though they are only worn occassionally, kimono are not extinct or even endangered. I especially loved seeing adorable little girls in their yukata!
 |
| Cute little girl in yukata with her mother! |
 |
| The adorable little girls in my apartment complex were even more adorable in their yukata. When Kris told me they were wearing kimono, I hopped out of the shower (still wet and covered in soap), threw on a towel, stole the iPhone with Kris (who was on the phone with his sister at the time), and hid behind a curtain so I could see their adorableness and take this creeper-like picture. |
No comments:
Post a Comment