LIVING in Japan means a life filled with festivals!

Throughout the year, different festivals grace the streets filled with interesting clothing, parades, stalls and, food. While every festival is different, they are all a great day out for all involved, especially the Kishiwada Danjiri Festival.

This festival is held every year in September in the small town of Kishiwada, Osaka. There are many danjiri festivals held throughout Japan, but this one is arguably the most famous. A danjiri is a wooden float built in the shape of a temple, and adorned with intricate and colourful carvings. This float is then pulled through the streets for all to see. At the Kishiwada festival, they don’t just pull these floats though — they run at full speed down the street, trailing these huge monuments behind them!

There are 35 beautiful, hand-carved floats in the festival each year. With each float representing a different district of the city. They weigh more than 3000kg and are pulled by a team of up to 1,000 people. As they run through the streets, other members of the community will follow the float, running behind. I even ended up joining one of these runs, and flying past rows of spectators with my newly-adopted friends.

In case this didn’t already sound dangerous enough, there are also a number of people sitting on the float chanting or playing traditional musical instruments.

And then you have the cherry on the cake — the daiku-gata. They are given the honour of standing atop the float and directing everyone in their team. They jump up and down, dancing and chanting, and entertaining the crowds. As these floats fly around corners at top speed, it’s a wonder these men manage to stay attached!

Luckily, when I went, there were no big crashes — but it has happened before. This is what gives this festival its monocle of ‘Most Dangerous’. But honestly, it was also the ‘Most Fun’!

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