Yoshiura Crab Festival

As a part of our exchange program, we were suggested (rather strongly) to join to a trip to a small town nearby called Yoshiura (吉浦) to watch the annual Crab Festival. It sounded a bit odd and hearing on the way there in the bus that some of the locals dress up as demons and beat bystanders with bamboo sticks didn’t really help that feeling. The scenery on the way was amazing though and since I hadn’t ever been to a traditional Japanese festival before, so even the prospect of getting a little beating didn’t really bother me too much.

Even though to me Yoshiura seemed like a moderately sized small town located about an hour out of Higashi-Hiroshima, nobody seems to have heard of it. And it seemed like they don’t get that many foreign visitors, we got a lot of looks from almost everyone and giggles from small children. It was benign though, so I didn’t mind at all.

 

The whole idea behind the Crab Festival is the celebration of the years harvests. Each district of Yoshiura would have their own portable shrine, corresponding to the main source of income they had. The districts responsible for fishing have a ship, the districts responsible for making sake have large barrels of sake. The shrines are then brought up the stairs to the larger shrine and then brought back down later, accompanied by a lot of noise and music. The volume of the event was perhaps one of the more surprising parts.

Here are some more pictures, enjoy!