Going, Going, Gion! (7/16/10 & 7/17/10)

The Gion Matsuri is a month-long festival that takes place in Kyoto each year, and we were able to get a glimpse of it on Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th. There were a lot of vendors selling a variety of foods and a lot of impressive floats in Saturday's parade. Of course, there were also a ton of people walking around, so it was very crowded.

July 16th, 2010: In order to spend a decent amount of time at the festival, we left the lab at the university much earlier than usual. When we got to Kyoto it was starting to rain, but luckily we all brought our umbrellas (the big 525 Yen one I bought at the university store really came in handy). Near the exit of the train station we could see a lot of people and one of the lantern-covered floats. We walked around a bit and came across a street that was lined with many types of vendors. They were selling things like candy apples, children's masks, and shaved ice and some of them were (obviously rigged) lotteries to win video games and systems. After taking a short break to decide what to do, we continued down the decorated streets towards another one of the floats. What we didn't know what that people were crowding the street to line up to look inside the float, and we were stuck in a mass of people for quite a while. It was quite uncomfortable and not the best start to the trip, and it made New York City during Christmas time seem like an empty parking lot.

We escaped the packed street and took a turn down one a street that was part of the Teramachi-dori shopping plaza. There were also crowds of people here, but they kept moving for the most part. This street consisted of many storefronts, most of which were selling fresh fish and other related foods. There were some general convenience stores and souvenir shops, too. This street stretched on for a bit, and intersected another wider one with different shops. There was a lot more variety on this street; there was a coffee shop, t-shirt store, clothing store, and even an arcade (that we didn't find until the next day). Some of us went to check out the crane-game arcades, but they didn't have any regular arcade games. The second floor of one of them had a few music games, but they were in a tiny, dimly-lit room.

At the end of our walk through the shopping area, we came out near a busy street and wanted to look for a place to have dinner. There were several places along the street and we ended up stopping in a place called Yayoiken. In this restaurant, you order your food from a vending machine: you put in your money, select a menu item, and the machine gives you a ticket. When you are seated, you give the ticket to the waitress/waiter and they bring out your food when it's ready. Everyone else got the steak meal that was advertised out front, and I ordered a plate with two hamburger patties, two small hot dogs, and a piece of fried chicken over onions and bean sprouts with a tasty sauce. All of the meals came with soup, a cabbage salad, and rice and everything was delicious.

After dinner we made our way back to the streets we traversed before and found a long, wide street with lots of vendors on it. All of the stands were lit up, and there were many duplicate stands (in case you missed the first one you saw). This street was pretty crowded, but not as bad as the ones earlier in the day. Some of us stopped to get snacks, and I got cotton candy and melon shaved ice on our walk down the street. The lantern floats that we saw before were now lit up, too. Since it was getting late, we made our way back to the train station and went home.

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July 17, 2010: We got up nice and early to catch the parade, and we managed to see some of the floats up close. There were lots of people crowded at the edge of the side walk but we managed to get close enough to take some nice pictures. Two types of floats were displayed at the parade: small ones with famous people on top and a bunch of dressed-up marchers around them, and huge floats with giant wheels and tall tops being pulled by many people. The people in the large floats rang bells and chanted, while the men on the front waved fans around and shouted when the float moved forward. It was an interesting sight and was pretty impressive to see the big floats being turned at street intersections (flattened bamboo is put under the big wheels and the many people tugging work together to make the float move).

The parade lasted for quite a while, but after taking a bunch of pictures we ended up back on the same street in the Teramachi shopping area that we visited the day before. It seemed a little more crowded than before, but the lines of people kept moving. We passed some places we didn't see before, like a KFC, and we had lunch at the First Kitchen. I got a cheese, bacon, egg burger again with cheese fries and melon soda this time. Initially it was only four of us who made the second trip to Kyoto, but we met up with another after some walking around in the same direction and not meeting each other. We ended up walking out of the shopping area and back in, passing the arcade that we were going to be looking for later.

When we were all met up, we found our way back to the arcade that we thought was just a pachinko parlor. There were actually two floors of arcade games above the pachinko area, mostly filled with fighting games like Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6. There was even a small cafe area that was obviously geared towards the anime-girl-loving Japanese gamer types. I didn't play any games, but Paul played against a Japanese player in the game BlazBlue and was completely demolished. Judging by what I've seen in Japanese players, I can agree that they are much better at video games than we in the US are.

We proceeded down a road that we visited on our first trip to Kyoto to a shrine were there was supposed to be an event at 4:00PM. There were not that many people initially so we were able to get a spot on the curb, but more and more people eventually started filling in. Once again, we encountered the UCSD students, who walked by and said hi. After a while we met up with Khoa and Ken, another WPI student who lives in Japan. Soon afterwards, there was an announcement from the nearby police saying that the event was delayed until 6:00PM. It was already almost 5:00PM at that time, so we decided to head back home. There were two processions of people that went up to the shrine while we were there, but we didn't get to see the main event. Fortunately, we did get to see the parade and had a good time overall.

(Check out all the pictures from the Gion Festival here!)