👘 [Japanese Week] 🗾 What to do in Japan: Attend a Natsumatsuri (夏祭り)

やっと土曜日ですね!!

(yatto doyōbidesu ne! - It's finally Saturday!)

July has been extremely fast and we're already in August, it's amazing! Being deep summer, I wanted to share one of my (and the majority of Japanese as well) favorite things I loved to do last year in this season: going to summer festivals!

Japanese 夏祭り (natsu = summer and matsuri = festival)

The summer festivals are really popular and they're often held in both shrines and temples (with the famous procession of the wooden replica of s shrine) or by a beach area, where they hold breathtaking fireworks shows.

For once, what you see in anime and manga resembles the reality: you're really going to feel like you entered a cartoon with all the food stands where you can find from street food (like takoyaki) to actual dishes like ramen and noodles. Not to mention ice creams, cotton candies, and any (literally, ANY) kind of fizzy drinks as well as alcoholic ones.

Besides food, there are popular stands like target practice, the lucky lottery, and the fishing stand, where you give you a flat, circular fishnet and a bowl and you have to scoop in as many goldfish as you can before the net breaks. At first, I thought I would be expensive but, surprisingly, it wasn't: the most expensive I've found was 300円, which yes it's cheap but you're going to be very pissed off it a fish breaks the net at second 1.

from the anime 'Assassination Classroom' - ph: screenshot

Usually, during this kind of event, girls and boys dress in the traditional yukata, which is the cotton version of the kimono and it's made out of printed fabrics for girls, while boys' ones are usually monochrome and in dark colors, like black or navy blue.

ph credits: HERE and HERE

Two things are going to happen once you attend a matsuri: you'll never want to leave and you're going to lose track of time, it's like Pinocchio's Pleasure Island but no one is going to be transformed into a donkey, rest assured. 

You're not going to be in Japan in the summer season? Don't worry, they're not a summer-only kind of thing, there are matsuri all year round but, obviously, the most famous are the sakura matsuri during the cherry blossom season (late March - start of April) and in summer (between the end of July and all the way until September) because of the weather.

Ph: all the photos in this article are my own, if not otherwise stated.