Takatsuki Matsuri

The Summer is the festival season in Japan and various festival is held in many places.

Takatsuki city where we live held Takatsuki festival, and as it was walking distance we went to have a look.

On the big street from a station to a council, cars were stoped and place was filled with people.

One of main event was, the prosseseion of dancers and a music band with traditiona Japanese instraments.

unfortunately there were somany people, we only caught a glimps of it. Really, we needed to get there early to take some space to watch.

Peopla were wearing kimono style costumes and head bands. It was the dance called "Awaodori" which came from south east of Japan. The lyric goes "the fools who dance and the fools who watch. if both is fool then better to dance.......!" and they move quite comicaly,so it`s fun to watch!

We walked along the street to see whats there. most of stalls were selling usual festival stuff.

I`m not a big fun of squids, but watching these on the grill on stick make them look taste lot nicer.

Really good smell was waffting down the streets!

And I have never seen these when we were kids....

Pickled whole cucumbers on stick!!

and cherry tomatos on stick too...

You might see this in England...

Hunny and Viz`s first choice was Toffee Apples!

It`s so red and sticky. after eating this their lips were coloured nicely....ell, Viz`case is whole mouth area!

Little later kids were of course hungry...

Viz chose "Tamago Senbei" which is prown fravered thin cracker made with some starch topped with brown sauce and mayonase, and a fried egg on top!

We walked along more looking into stalles. And also they had a stage in one of school near by, and they were performing dances and Japanese drums.

One thing really caught our eyes was...

The raffle for beetles!!

It had cages and boxes which had many beetles in.

Viz was keep asking if he can buy rhino beetles since the beggining of summer, and here, there was his chance to have one!!

When he did it , he could have two goes and first two red balls were came out of the box which has a little hole that balls fall out when you turn it. and second time, it was another red ball, so we thought red one was Hazure (a blank ) . But even a blank , he still got a beetle which was about 2inches length including a horn!

That made him so happy!!

And if he won the Top prise, he would get this!!

A manmos beetle of Heraqueen!!!

Oh my god, it was so beautiful!!!

It came from philippine or that area and it doesn`t fry.(maybe it`s too heavy to fry??) I was having a difficulty taking photos in a tank , and the owner kindly said ok to put it on his hand for the photo.

It was really amasing!

so, with this beetle(last festival we were with little tortoise..!) we headed home.

Hunny had her eyes on sweets stall. there were many colourfull round ball shaped sweets(hard boiled one) with many different flavours. Something we had when we were kids.

The festival was finishing at nine o`clock. While we were choosing sweets, it past nine and with the announcement, all the lights of stalles went off to force people to finish it off! So photo is bit dark and sweets doesn`t look so nice, but in the light they looks like jwelles(well, it did in my child`s eye!).