三社祭 Sanja Matsuri - Part 2

Photos from a famous Tokyo festival continue...

As mentioned yesterday, a meetup group and I enjoyed the opening day parade celebrating the start of the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa, Tokyo.

Here are some more pictures from that event in mid May:

A group of men sporting straw hats (I love a man in a hat, so these guys were cool):

There was a group of 3 women dressed in these costumes -- this is reflective of other festivals which take place in April, May & November. Several women perform a dance as these birds. (See a photo HERE. Information in Japanese is HERE)

The headpiece looked very heavy! @_@

After the parade, we made our way back to the shrine, and waited an hour in front of a small, traditional stage. While waiting, I watched a crowd gather and spotted this older guy....
 He looked ready to hit the Roppongi clubs after!

Finally, the performance was ready to begin.
Here, some drummers performed music before the dancers entered the stage.

Here are the dancers. They were carrying a wooden instrument, which had many small pieces of wood hanging from a string. That string was attached to two thick, black pieces of wood, which they held with their hands. They stretched the wooden pieces by manipulating the rope and then slapped the pieces together to make the sound. I had never seen that instrument before, and as a lover of music, the sound really intrigued me. I'm sorry I didn't shoot a video! (cries)

During the performance, I decided to get a shot of the crowd, just to show you the popularity of this festival:

cutenekko swims in a sea of camera ^_^

Before the dance and musical performance, I managed to get great shots of the earlier parade participants returning to the shrine. Here is a preview shot of tomorrow's post. Enjoy! 

The male kimono...quite nice eh?

Sanja Matsuri is held in May. Information on this festival is HERE. The shrine featured in this post is called Sensoji and is located in Asakusa area of Tokyo. Sensoji hosts many other festivals during the year. Click HERE to see more (enable "translate" on your browser if your computer does not support 日本語).