Here endeth the 休み

Friday was the best!!!
I met up with Molly and went into Tokyo to go to the 秋大祭 Great Autumn Festival at Meiji Jingu, which is a temple built to honor the spirits of the Meiji emperor and his wife. The emperor was born in early November, so each year around his birthday they hold a huge festival at the shrine, featuring performances and exhibitions of all sorts of traditional Japanese arts and martial arts. It was really amazing, and I know I didn't even see half of the stuff that was going on today.
There was a chrysanthemum exhibition, with chrysanthemums (of course) as well as all these little bonsai things that people had made into different shapes and stuff. Really cool! And everywhere we went, there were tons of people, and lots of Japanese people dressed not just in kimono, but in these really traditional, fancy outfits like what you'd wear to a coming of age ceremony or something. It was wonderful to see! I think one place in the temple that we passed, there was actually a wedding going on. At least, that's what it looked like: And of course there were lots of foreign tourists taking endless pictures of the kids all dressed up--they were really cute, but I felt kind of sorry for them. Speaking of cute...these kids weren't dressed up, but they were so adorable I just couldn't resist! ;-P We also passed a small stage where there were some people doing a taiko drumming performance, which we only watched for a few minutes, but it was really impressive. I took a video!


And then in various locations around the grounds there was a whole bunch of different martial arts demonstrations going on. I didn't get pictures of lots of it, cause my camera battery died--so what I don't have photographic evidence of is 1) the Iaido demonstration: sort of like kendo (Japanese swordfighting) except they use real swords instead of wooden ones, so I guess you could say it's more like Japanese fencing or something; 2) a whole bunch of other martial arts that I don't really know the names for--they were fighting with wooden swords like kendo, but without armor, and there was one where instead of swords they used really long wooden staffs, and even sometimes a staff-person vs. a sword-person.
One that I did manage to get some pics of was again, something I don't know the name of. But a bunch of guys in samurai armor came out onto the field and were doing exercises firing their muskets, and there was even a cannon that went off once. I wasn't expecting it, and the BOOM scared the crap out of me.But of course the whole reason that I wanted to come to the Meiji Jingu festival in the first place was because of kyudo (--whee!!). LOL. There were actually several different kyudo things going on, but most of them were at like 9am, which when it takes an hour to get to the temple, is a bit early. So I had to sacrifice those. But the best part was, fortunately, late enough that I could get there to see it. And that is something called Yabusame. Yabusame is kyudo done from horseback--they ride at breakneck speed toward the target, and then shoot as the horse runs past it, without stopping. I had heard about it, and seen pictures, but never thought I would actually get the chance to see it in person--so when I heard about the Meiji Jingu festival (thank you, Amy!!!) I was about as thrilled as it's possible to be.
...And as I'm writing this, and thinking about the million pictures and videos that I took today...I'm realizing that this post will get even longer than the last one. So in the name of economy, I think I'll cut this post off here, and then resume the Yabusame ecstasies in a new post. So until then... ;-D