Festival in Nagoya

Public holidays are plentiful in Japan. And holidays call for festivals. I spent the day mixing with the crowds a couple of weekends ago. This first picture is of an outdoor shopping center at Osu Kannon that is covered with a roof over the street. There were crowds everywhere.

There were performances on every corner.

Some were rather, uh... unusual.

Others were very traditional.

O

My favorite performance was the Taiko Drummers...

Next, I went to Nagoya's "Central Park" at Sakae. They had big stages set up all over with different performances taking place. This group was a local Community College chorus. After the show, a man came up to me and asked me how I liked it (they were singing songs in English). He was very pleased when I told him that they were very good and I enjoyed the show very much. He told me he was the Principal of the school.

I loved all of the performances. The music was very diverse.

Not only Americans are enthralled with Harley Davidson motorcycles. There was a display of several very nice bikes at the festival too.

However, I couldn't stop laughing when I saw the dancing Elvis's who rode in on them.

This group of people was selling these beautiful bouquets of flowers for only 500 yen ($5.00).

There is a lot of talent of all ages in Nagoya.

What is a festival without food! These are Japanese Fries (I mean French Fries... Oh I'm so confused).

Most of the food looked very tempting.

But I couldn't get too excited about the octopus. It is good but kind of chewy.

Yummy.

More yummy.

And what would a festival be without food on stick. These are pickles.

This is squid on a stick.

Beef, pork and chicken on a stick.

And my favorite, monkey on a stick.

OK, I just got carried away. This was a monkey act in the park. He was pretty talented.

This dog was wearing a bib and was apparently, ready to eat too.

The show went on well into the night.

I just love public holidays in Japan. Oh, by the way, this weekend is another public holiday (Culture Day I think).