Jono and I were invited to go on a Japanese bus tour with 2 of our Japanese friends, Mayumi and Naomi. It was a great deal, we certainly got our moneys worth. All I have to say about it is that it was VERY JAPANESE!!! And by that I mean that we spent a lot of time travelling and not so much time off the bus (18 hours bus time in 2 days). Mind you, it was worth it and there is no other way to see what we saw in 2 days! It was amusing to me to be part of a tour group because our tour guide held up a flag which we had to follow. I have seen many tour groups being lead around Himeji following their guide's flag and finally we got to be part of it!
After being picked up at 6;20am on the Saturday morning (ouch) we headed for the bus and left Himeji at 7am. Our first stop was at Lake Biwa, the largest lake in all of Japan. It was a really pretty place to stop for a rest.
After many rest stops along the way we arrived at our destination at 5:30pm. The small town of Toyama was swarming with people mainly piling out of the hundreds of tour buses there. The traditional styled streets were all lined with lanterns and looked amazing when the sun went down. We were there to for the Owara Kaze no Bon Matsuri (a dancing festival). The style of dance is very slow and graceful with lots of arm movements and slow walking. The dancers consisted of men and women, boys and girls wearing kimonos, wooden thongs (with socks naturally) and straw hats bent in half covering their faces. The little kids were really cute.
We made our way up the main street which was lined with people awaiting the parade. We were able to watch the dancers from up close. They would do their dance, move down the street a bit more and do another dance. After that dance they'd move down the street a bit more and repeat. By the time the dancers made it down to the other end of the street to the main building a mob had formed and I saw some very aggressive Japanese people trying to get a glimpse at the dancers. At one stage they blocked the street entirely and we had to find an alternate route to get around them! Unfortunately we were too slow making our way down to the main building to see the final dancing performance. All we could see were the dancers' shadows in the walls and occasionally their hands! We enjoyed it nonetheless.