Taiko Dai Matsuri!

What a Saturday! Every year, Niihama holds a huge festival celebrating autumn, called the taiko dai festival. Each of the 55 neighborhoods in Niihama has a giant float, each weighing around 3 metric (that's right, metric) tons, and costing around 200,000 dollars. Ten men ride the float, four on the top, four on the legs to give directions, and two inside that beat a huge taiko drum. Each of these floats are carried by teams of 150 men around the city to different fairgrounds. Because I have some awesome friends here in Japan, I got a chance to participate at the biggest event of the festival.

Got to the staging area at around 10:30, and waited around for everyone to show up. Once our team all gathered with the float, everyone ate together. There was an entire pickup truck devoted to beer, I presume to make sure no one got dehydrated. We all had on jackets called hapi, which were bright yellow to represent our district. After eating and drinking for about an hour, I listened to some instructions from the main organizer for our group, none of which I understood. I grabbed a spot on the logs supporting our float, and off we went. We had to walk the float about 4 kms to the main area. Thankfully all we had to do was push it, there were wheels mounted on the bottom. Still, it takes a lot of force to move a 3 ton object. Every once in a while we would shake the thing, and lift it to show off the strength of our group. Usually happened when we were passing another team's float. The whole way we chanted, "Sodya, sodya." I'm told it actually has no meaning, just something to get the spirits up.

After about an hour of push and go, we finally entered into the main fairgrounds. Huge crowds, both in the stands and on the festival floor. There were about twenty of the floats in our area, each with its own crew of 150+ people. We put our float in line with the others, then we removed the wheels off the bottom, as well as removed some of the side panels, and filled it to the brim with balloons. Then 6 or 7 floats at a time would be carried to the front of the grounds and lifted together, while the crowd roared. You couldn't hear anything but taiko drums and the whistles of the guys trying to direct us. Like I said, crazy. And damn, was this thing heavy, even with 150 people supporting the weight. When our turn came to parade, we must have carried it and lifted it for around 20 minutes, but it felt like 2 hours. At the end of each section, the top opened up, and all the balloons were released. Great fun. We brought it back into the line, and put the wheels back on. And that was the festival. I have absolutely no idea what was celebrated, or what the floats mean, but I'd do it again anyday. Definitely was the only foreigner participating, I think my friends must have pulled a few strings to get me in. Wonderful experience!