Nakano Matsuri

There is always something happening in Tokyo, especially from March to October. I like to use the excellent event list from the Japan Times which favours the more traditional festivals (or matsuris 祭り). One of the wards where nothing seems to happen is Nakano, which also is the ward where I live. That doesn’t mean that there are no festivals, shrines or temples in Nakano, but they are less important and smaller than the more famous ones (like Sensoji or Yasukuni) in other parts of the city. Nakano’s festivals are more visited by the locals and sometimes it may happen that you stumble upon a matsuri such as this:

I probably just missed the announcement, but I had my camera ready. The portable shrines were carried on Nakano-douri, one of the main roads. As you can see in the video, the Japanese police are excellent at crowd and matsuri control. One lane for the shrines, the other for the traffic. Many festivals are like that – if it’s a big road, they tend to close only parts of the road.