Category: Urban Essays

It had been four years, but…

We were not sure if we could go, so I didn’t search enough for information ahead of time, which was a mistake.
It’s the Hakata Tômyô Lantern Arts Festival, which is held every year in the Hakata area. (This year was the thirteenth.)
But we didn’t have good luck with it like we did in past years!
We enjoyed it in 2002 and 2003. It was a disaster because of a strong wind and rain in 2004. We couldn’t go there because of work in 2005. And I was in the hospital last year. And we finally could go again, but…
(Although we could visit and enjoyed the second Fukuhaku Tanabata Lantern Festival.)

It probably started around 6:00 p.m. But we were a little late to go. We didn’t have enough time to go around, and directly went to the Gokusho-machi area by bus.
It was held on one of the days of the Gokusho Illuminated Walk event, so the crowds were bigger than I had seen before.
So we could see a children’s dance for the Hakata festival, and a small parade of Japanese traditional dancers. (Or they might have just been passing by?) But we still don’t like a crowd!
We were a little curious about whether some of the people among the dancers were the ones who go to the Kyushu sumo tournament every year and leave just before the last match of the day.

But now we think that going to this area might have been wrong for us.
In previous years, we liked the pictures made out of lanterns on the grounds of a local school, and that’s why we aimed for there. But we found there was a long line!
In addition, we had to remove our shoes to go upstairs in the school building. There was also a line for that!
At the place where we could see the lantern art, there were also many people, so we couldn’t look at it quietly.

That took some time, so we thought there was no time to go to other places, so we went to a park that was part of the festival in previous years.
The event became smaller? There was nothing there.
Then we went to the start point of the event, Hakata Riverain. A Japanese taiko drum performance was still going on, but they had to perform between two tall buildings. To tell the truth, we felt it was hard to listen. (Not because of their playing: the sound was bad.)

So we somehow felt sad and went back home.
I really think I’ll do more careful research when we go to the event next time.

– YS, 21 October 2007

21 October 2007