Kanonji Matsuri

This past weekend was Kanonji's autumn festival. Almost every weekend in October there is a festival somewhere. The first weekend was Toyohama's. Kanonji's and Siajo's were this past weekend. I'm not sure who's coming up next, but there are still a lot of cities to go. Instead of having a carnival or a fest or Halloween, the Japanese make these large wooden vehicles, with drums, to drive the neighborhood gods around to the city shrine. These vehicles are called chosa, and they are huge! There are several poles that people pull and push them with while others ride in the top, and someone else sits in the middle, drumming. At the shrine there are vendors, with food and toys, and events. Kids get to dress up in kimonos and there have some sort of pageant. We couldn't get a good enough look to figure out what excatly they were doing, but we were more interested in the food anyway. There were candied apples, crepes, corn on the cob, yakitori, taiyaki, squid on a stick, and some other mystery foods. I was not brave enough to try them, but Mark did.