The Takayama Festival

It was upon the noon of the second day into our road trip that we arrived upon our destination of Takayama. The very purpose of our trip lay here: to attend the famous Takayama festival, renown throughout Japan. Well rested after our stay in the Kiso Valley, Ken, Lo, Dario and I found the streets of the city packed with tourists both from abroad and within Japan, the crowd growing denser and denser towards the epicenter of the festival grounds.

The enormous floats of the Sanno Takayama Festival

In a nutshell.

The Takayama Festival is held twice a year with very slight variations - once in Spring and once in Fall, with each of the festivities lasting two days. During this time, enormous yatai festival floats are pulled into the town square, and a procession of 200 men, women and children dressed in varied traditional outfits can be seen parading across the town. Some are dressed as oni - Japanese demons, children play instruments such as bells and flutes, and others still wear the outfits of Shinto priests, carrying large flag-like standards.

Holy crap it's crowded.

At different points during the festival, the crowd gets extremely densely packed around the festival floats as ancient puppet show over 300 years old begins, puppets emerging from the top of the floats themselves. The three puppets themselves are beautifully crafted and controlled by 12 strings each, requiring 3 puppeteers to man a single one. I later learned the springs in the puppets are carved out of whale. Hoowee. Each puppet gets the limelight for a part of the show, with each segment having an impressive turning point. For instance, the last puppet, that of a maiden, had a dragon burst out of her ass. I kid you not. This part was deemed too obscene for the Japanese public until only 30 years ago.

Hey, even the festival aside though, Takayama is a nice town quite worth a visit. It doesn't at any point feel like a metropolitan city. It has a charming market street with oldish shops, but even nicer still is the presence of rivers running through the town, spanned by scenic bridges from which, looking down, the likes of koi fish can be seen swimming around.
At the extremity of the central part of the city is a park and a mountain from which one can see the whole of Takayama. I was reminded at once of Montreal.

It's quite charming!

The first thing I did in Takayama.

All in all, Takayama was a charming experience and another window into Japanese culture. The festival was worth the trip, but my tip-toeing across central Japan didn't end at Takayama.

As you'll soon see!