Nagoya Matsuri
It's been a hel of a month, and to boot, I worked my first (and hopefully only) Saturday this weekend. Autumn is here and the weather is perfect - clear skies, not too hot, not too cold, and no more sweating!
This weekend was also the Nagoya Matsuri. I missed the parade on Saturday due to work, which I'm told is one of the highlights of the festival, including legions of people dressed in samurai gear and three celebrities who get to dress up as the three local warlords who unified Japan in the 16th century - Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa.
In celebration of the season (and a certain amount of disposable income), I lashed out on a new phone with all the bells and whistles - and a great little camera, which takes better pictures than most dedicated digital cameras out there. So, today I decided to put it through its paces, and you can enjoy the results! Here we go...
Alas, I only caught the tail end of the parade, but there was a whole procession of these floats down the street.
In honour of the Matsuri, admission to the castle and many of the city's museums was free, so after checking out an exhibition of Persian antiquities (2500 year old golden drinking vessels, cuneiform stelae, swords and spearheads, etc. - amazing stuff, but no photos, please), I visited the castle again to get a new wallpaper for my phone...
Note the people at the base of the castle for scale. They were doing some dancing and chanting and taiko drumming down there, but it was too crowded to try to get any closer. Out the front, however, they had a great display of bonsai from local artists, so I got pics of some of the more interesting ones...
First, a nice, but kind of plain one - a mini tree in a dish...
Then, a forest in a dish...
Next, an incredibly gnarled juniper...
The windswept look...
And 'cascade' style, with extra points for a funky looking dish...
And finally, a local landmark I was passing on the way home - the Nagoya TV Tower. I not really sure why these towers are so famous, but I suppose anything that stands out in otherwise fairly drab cities is bound to be popular...
Anyhoo, it's getting late and I have to work tomorrow. Look forward to another update soon, when I get around to cleaning out my old phone!
This weekend was also the Nagoya Matsuri. I missed the parade on Saturday due to work, which I'm told is one of the highlights of the festival, including legions of people dressed in samurai gear and three celebrities who get to dress up as the three local warlords who unified Japan in the 16th century - Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Ieyasu Tokugawa.
In celebration of the season (and a certain amount of disposable income), I lashed out on a new phone with all the bells and whistles - and a great little camera, which takes better pictures than most dedicated digital cameras out there. So, today I decided to put it through its paces, and you can enjoy the results! Here we go...
Alas, I only caught the tail end of the parade, but there was a whole procession of these floats down the street.
In honour of the Matsuri, admission to the castle and many of the city's museums was free, so after checking out an exhibition of Persian antiquities (2500 year old golden drinking vessels, cuneiform stelae, swords and spearheads, etc. - amazing stuff, but no photos, please), I visited the castle again to get a new wallpaper for my phone...
Note the people at the base of the castle for scale. They were doing some dancing and chanting and taiko drumming down there, but it was too crowded to try to get any closer. Out the front, however, they had a great display of bonsai from local artists, so I got pics of some of the more interesting ones...
First, a nice, but kind of plain one - a mini tree in a dish...
Then, a forest in a dish...
Next, an incredibly gnarled juniper...
The windswept look...
And 'cascade' style, with extra points for a funky looking dish...
And finally, a local landmark I was passing on the way home - the Nagoya TV Tower. I not really sure why these towers are so famous, but I suppose anything that stands out in otherwise fairly drab cities is bound to be popular...
Anyhoo, it's getting late and I have to work tomorrow. Look forward to another update soon, when I get around to cleaning out my old phone!
posted by Ia Ftaghn at 11:30 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home