Japanese Summer Festivals!

It's getting hot here in Japan, and you know what that means--sky-high electric bills and white people sweating like hogs when they can't find their favorite brand of deoderant in stores. But it also means summer festivals! To open on a  bit of a downer, some people believe the reason so many of Japan's great festivals (like O-Bon, the Day of the Dead, celebrated throughout Japan) occur in summer is because huge deadly plagues used to spread in hot weather, leading people to want to appease the gods and mourn their dead. But their loss is our gain, as demonstrated by these amazing festivals:

Yamakasa Matsuri, Fukuoka

Any resident of Fukuoka like our team at J-Subculture) knows the Yamakasa festival, where giant, colorful floats are paraded through the streets. There was a time where they used to get snagged on power lines, so they developed floats where the upper bit can be mechanically raised and lowered.

O-Bon, Kyoto

In the old capitol of Kyoto, O-Bon is celebrated by lighting a huge fire on a hillside in the shape of the character for "big."

 Awa-Odori, Tokushima

The famous Awa-Odori Festival, in Tokushima on the island of Shikoku, features perhaps the most dancing of any festival. If memory serves, the saying there goes "the dancing fool and the fool who watches are equally fools, so why not dance?" The "odori" part means dancing, the "awa" means I don't know what it means.

Nebuta Matsuri, Aomori

My personal favorite (although I admit I have yet to see any of these in person, even Yamakasa; I'm new in town) is the Nebuta Matsuri, held in Aomori at the southern tip of Honshuu. Aomori's other biggest draw is a godforsaken volcanic wasteland called Osorezan ("Mt. Terror") that is believed by some to be the gateway to hell.