Sagicho Matsuri - Omihachiman 17th March

Sunday 17th March saw myself and Todd up nice and early with the intent to check out another one of Japan's numerous festivals. Today's festival was Sagicho Matsuri all the way up in Omihachiman in Shiga Prefecture (about 145miles away from where we live!), therefore we had to start the day bright and early to get there in time for the festival, and meant a very late night making our way back!
Our friend Austin (a 2nd year ALT from England who lives in Tokushima City) has a friend who lives in Omihachiman and it was through him that Austin found out about this festival. It was from Austin then that we got the recommendation to go and so our group consisted of four of us from Tokushima (Austin, Todd, Randall and I) to meet up with Daniela and Christine, and a few of their friends up in Omihachiman.
We left Todd's apartment at 6:30 to get to the city in time to pick up Austin and Randall and head towards the ferry port in time for the 8:00am ferry. This was actually my first time in taking the ferry anywhere in Tokushima, and I have to say, it wasn't that bad. The best part I found about the ferry was the fact that there were hardly any seating areas! Now this may sound ridiculous to many of you - 'who on earth would like the fact that there aren't many places to sit on a 2 hour ferry ride?!', but the fact that there were no chairs meant that there were plenty of open carpeted areas that you could use to relax on and (as we did) sleep! Lying down on the floor was a surreal experience at first but once I had got used to the idea, I really enjoyed taking advantage of the fact that I didn't have to sit on an uncomfortable chair, and I feel that lying down on the floor actually greatly helped keep my travel sickness at bay! I was definitely a fan by the time we had reached our destination of Wakayama.
From Wakayama, we took a train to Osaka and then on to Omihachiman. Meeting Daniel, Christine and Takeshi at the station we then headed for a bit of lunch before continuing on to the festival.
So what is Sagicho Matsuri?
There are 13 towns in Omihachiman, and each year, each town creates a sagicho (large straw float) decorated with the year's Chinese zodiac animal made out of dried food. The floats are also decorated with other items including a 3m long bamboo pole with thousands of red streamers hanging from the end. On the Saturday of the festival, each town parades their float through the streets and awards are given for the best decorated float, or the best story behind why the float was created. On the Sunday the floats the battle against each other - each trying to tip another town's sagicho over. After a break in the evening, the floats are then brought back to the main street and are set alight.

So this year was the Chinese Year of the Snake, so each float had a perfectly decorated snake model on the front of them. It was interesting to see how differently each town made their snake and the decorations behind them, and it would have been really interesting to find out why each town had created their float like they did.

My favourite snake of the day

A couple of snakes caught in battle!

So when we got to the festival, we found ourselves to be straight in the action, turning up right next to two floats who were lining up to fight. These floats are massive and it takes at least 30 or so men to carry them on their shoulders. Being so heavy meant they were also pretty hard to control at times, so as a spectator you really had to be on your toes and on the look out at all times so that you don't get squished! It was great to watch these fights, which were controlled and watched over by a few members on each float using whistles to communicate what needed to be done. Once one float has overturned the other, the town then moves on to find another float to challenge. We saw many fights during the day and enjoyed wondering up and down the Shrine's road checking out all the different decorations, floats, and also checking out the festival's food stands!

Supporting the sagicho looks like back-breaking work!

The first stage of attack is to lock the front supporting beams

The aim of the game is to tip the opponent's float over!

I have actually already been to Omihachima way back in the first September I was in Japan, visiting Danny with Austin and a couple of other friends, and I remember thinking at the time how quiet and peaceful the town was. Apparently it's a whole different ball game when the festival is on as it seemed like the entire population had come out to join in this brilliant festival. It was a great atmosphere.
So after a full afternoon of fighting, the float bearers headed back to have a break and grab some food. This gave us a full (rather chilly) 2 1/2 hours to look around, grab food, and hang out before the final part of the festival. At 7:30pm the floats started coming back into the shrine area, and you could see how the men and women carrying the floats had had a little more time to get some drink into them! Spirits were high as the floats were paraded around the area before being set down and their supporting beams removed. Large torches where then brought out from inside the temple and at around 8 o'clock the first stage of burning happened.

Using the lantern (bottom) to set fire to the floats

The snakes look so realistic at times.

It was crazy how quickly these things went up in flames! What was even more crazy was how quickly our feelings towards the fires change from 'ooh, that's better a bit of warmth' to 'dear god I think my face is about to melt!' to when the fires burn down and we are back to feeling pretty cold. The change was somewhat intense!
We got to watch a few rounds of the floats going up in flames which was great as it meant we could attempt to get photos from many angles. I tried to get a few good photos of the snakes coming out of the fire, and I'm pleased with some of them, but it proved to be very difficult as if you were too far back in the crowd, you couldn't really get a good shot, but if you were too near the front, you had the disadvantage of being a flame blocker for the people behind you! There was a lot of jostling but it was still great to see and an absolutely fantastic event! I'm not sure if I'd go again, as the travel was a bit extreme for one day (we didn't make it back to my house until 6am Monday morning!) but I'd definitely recommend it to anyone - it was a great experience and definitely lots of fun!