Aomori Nebuta

Nebuta is aomori's most famous festival. Basically, people pull gigantic floats through the streets of the city; each float (or nebuta) is commissioned by an organization or company that does business in the prefecture. The power company has one, as does a local superconductor factory. Each year the english teachers are allowed to dance with the prefectural government nebuta.

First, you gotta get your dancing clothes on:

I don't remember what these particular outfits are called, but they are specific to the nebuta festival. Basically, they're supposed to become unraveled as your dance and stuff. they're also covered with bells that fall off as you dance. These are given thrown to the crowd for good luck.


These are all the english teachers/tranlsators in the Shimokita region, i.e. the only non-japanese people I can hang out with if I'm willing to drive about two hours.


English teachers assembling before the dancing starts. "No drinking booze," we're told, "stay hydrated." Half of those rules are obeyed.


This is the prefectural government nebuta. It's basically colored paper over a wooden frame. You can't see, but below the lit part are about thirty guys pulling the thing.


Oma-machi teacher Kathleen poses in front of the nebuta. you can see the underside of the nebuta better in this picture.


the parade route. getting ready and waiting.


...and we're off! we're held in a roped off area (the rope is carried by lots of guys so we can move within the parade).


how to dance in the aomori nebuta parade: jump on your right foot once, slide it forward once, do the same with the left foot, repeat for two hours.


as we danced, small children stood at the side of the parade route with fans, helping to keep us cool in exchange for the bells that fell off as we danced. if your bells werent falling off, you werent dancing hard enough.


there's large musical groups playing flutes and drums and assorted traditional instruments/music.... this si the only shot that really turned out ok.


these guys pulled a PA system in front of the dancing group. we he started shouting "RA-SE-RA, RA-SE-ERAU" you shout back "RA-SE, RA-SE, RA-SE-ERAU!" and start shuffling those feet:


I hope this works:


one of the bands:


all I gotta say is this: shin splints.