The Return of the Shinzaike Honcho Autumn Festival 2023

 

 

 

Shinzaike Honcho is the neighborhood we are in and every year there is an autumn festival. Except due to the pandemic the last neighborhood festival was in 2019, back when we were here previously! It was great getting to be a part of this again. It is an all-day thing where most people from the neighborhood are involved. The day starts at a shrine were there is a lion dance performance and men from the neighborhood carry the mikoshi (portable shrine). They can weigh a couple of tons, but this one was smaller and weighed less than one ton but was still pretty heavy!

There are two children inside the mikoshi that do the drumming and they switch out throughout the day. The mikoshi is switched between being carried and being rolled around the neighborhood as everyone else walks with it yelling "Yo Ya Sa." We stop at a park nearby to eat delicious bentos for lunch, see performances by school children, and then continued walking. Other neighborhoods are also carrying their own mikoshi and sometimes the mikoshi will "battle" if we cross paths, you can see some of this wonderful festival in the video above.