Mikoshi Festival

A mikoshi (神輿) is a portable Shinto shrine. Shinto followers believe that it serves as the vehicle of a divine spirit in Japan at the time of a parade of deities. Often, the mikoshi resembles a miniature building, with pillars, walls, a roof, a veranda and a railing and is lavishly decorated. During a matsuri, or Japanese festival, people bear a mikoshi on their shoulders by means of the two or four poles. They bring the mikoshi from the shrine, carry it around the neighborhoods that worship at the shrine, which Kaiya was able to participate in. She walked around our neighborhood for about 30 minutes before she had enough and wanted to go home. The mikoshi, after being paraded around the neighborhood all day is left in a designated area, resting on blocks, for a time before returning it to the shrine. Some shrines have the custom of dipping the mikoshi in the water of a nearby lake, river or ocean, which 11 neighborhoods in our region participated in the following day. It was pretty wild to see this event as the Japanese are very into it. We were almost run over a few times as you've noticed the mikoshi are huge and unbearably heavy, so its quite hard to steer, you just need to get out of the way! One group had so much fun that they just dumped their shrine in the water! You'll see the endstate in the video.

Kaiya loved dressing up in her yukata, or summer kimono. She saw most of her school friends at the festival and was so happy to see Hana Chan her best friend. The two were running toward each other calling the other's name as if they hadn't seen each other in years. Kaiya, by the way, can now speak Japanese and understands it pretty well. In the last month she has been more forward about speaking Japanese. She still is shy when put on the spot, but when around her friends she readily follows suit and is very comfortable about bossy her friends in Japanese!

The other day she asked me if I spoke Japanese and I said yes (well, I know her level) and she started talking to me in Japanese. So we spent the day talking to each other in short sentences or words. I bought a children's book titled "The First Thousand Words in Japanese" which we are learning together. I'm glad she's become more comfortable and accepting of learning the language. It took awhile, but she's fine with it now.