Jenn in Japan: Oiden Matsuri in 豊田

This past weekend was the Oiden Matsuri (festival) in Toyota, the very city that I live in. "Oiden" is a word from the old Mikawa dialect of the region meaning "Come on!" and the oiden cry of "Oiden mirin, odoro mai" means "Come on here, Let's dance together!" and this is what Oiden is all about. Hundreds of teams of dancers gather in the center of the city and follow a course around the town, all dancing the oiden dance and singing the oiden song in a carnival of brightly colored costumes.

The festival concludes on Sunday evening with one of the world's largest regular firework displays. More than 10,000 fireworks are let off in a display lasting nearly two hours. A fabulous way to end a wonderful weekend of dance and fun.

This is a picture of the stage where the winning dance group is presented with their prize. There are prizes for best costume and best choreography of a dance team. You can't see it but the train station where most of my travels in Japan begin is behind the stage.

The dancing all takes place on Saturday night, so I came out after work and watched the last of it. Here are some of the dancers.

This little blond Japanese boy is one of my students. His name is Shuria. He told his mom that he didn't recognize me in my yukata. And also in the picture are Haruko and Mari. They are also teachers with me at Amity. Shuria doesn't usually dress that like, but he was dancing in the festival. But, yeah his hair is usually blond.

More dancers.

Then on Sunday at All Nations Fellowship it was these two ladies' last day at ANF. They were flying back to the States the next day. The girl on the left is also named Jennifer and the girl on the right is Amber and she is from Memphis. Yeah! Tennessee!

These next pictures are from the evening of the fireworks, and 350,000 people from all over Japan come to watch. That is more than the population of all of Toyota. And I get to watch from the comfort of my living room. This year it was a bit rainy, so it was especially nice to be dry and cool in my apartment. I had invited some of my co-workers to watch it with me and Mari 先生 (sensei) was able to come. Here we are in our pretty yukatas standing on my balcony.

Some of the cool fireworks.

The poor sad people watching the fireworks from the bridge in the rain.

This one didn't really look like that, it's just how it showed up on my camera, but I think its kind of cool.

The finale fireworks. I was also really pleased with how this picture turned out. After this they had Ni-a-gu-ra Falls fireworks. They were really cool, but I couldn't get a good shot from where we were. It was a string of white sparks falling from a string or cord or something and it stretched for maybe 300 feet.