PARTY!!!!!

This past weekend was the famous Hyakuman-Goku Matsuri (百万石まつり). I'm not sure if this event is famous throughout Japan, but I know it is famous in this area (the Hokuriku area). This festival celebrates the arrival of Maeda Toshie in the Kaga (Ishikawa) area. About 500 years ago, Maeda came to Kaga and under his rule the Kaga area became the second wealthiest area in all of Japan. To celebrate what Maeda gave to Kaga, people here have been having the Hyakuman-Goku Matsuri for 58 years now. A quick calculation puts the first year at 1951, so I'm sure there might be a bit of post-war moral boosting factor involved in it as well.

To make a long story short, it was a lot of fun. The first two years here, I avoided celebrating the festival as I thought it wouldn't be worth the hassle of dealing with crazy tourists for two days. If you should ever find yourself in Ishikawa during this festival, it's more than worth going. Here are some pictures from this past weekend.


These are the drummers for the opening ceremony. I think there was something like 150 drummers for this event. Being close to that many drums was incredible. Wherever you are, if you have the chance to see Japanese Taiko drumming, it is well worth the time to watch the performance.


This picture is of the procession that goes out before the actor playing Maeda Toshie. It's pretty cool to see people dressed up as feudal warriors, equiped with swords, bows and arrows. I'm sure none of their weapons were real or functional, but hey, as long as it looks awesome, who cares? The really cool part about this was that even foreigners dressed up as warriors. Maybe next year I will see if I can have a small part in this parade.

On day two of the festival, there are many events to see free of charge inside Kanazawa Castle. One of the events was drumming from Noto Peninsula. Although there were many groups drumming this weekend, this group was by far the most creative. They did an interesting dance and skit to go with their music performance.

Another interesting show was ひぃろ (He-e-ro). I guess he has performed and won many awards and praises worldwide. After watching his show, I could see why. However, at first I didn't know what to think of this guy. He seemed kind of strange, but he was very energetic. He started doing juggling and some funny gags, but the highlight of his show was the above picture where he starts doing balancing acts. He starts off with just his hands, but he works up to balancing on top of the platform with one chair, two chairs, and eventually three chairs stacked on top of each other. I don't have a picture of his three chair balance (I have a video though, hopefully I can figure out how to get that off the camera). I did however manage to get a picture of his two chair balancing act.

Of course there were many other things to see and do this weekend, but I didn't get pictures of all of them. Some other things were Jazz concerts, Japanese archery, Japanese gospel singers and high school dance teams. I'll finish off this entry with some pictures from the beautiful garden that Maeda Toshie had built nearly 500 years ago, Kenrokuen (兼六園）.

If you are interested in this festival and want to see some movies, I recommend going to youtube.com and searching for 百万石まつり (you can just copy and paste that).