Koromo Matsuri (Toyota City)

Koromo Matsuri is a Harvest festival which began in the Edo Era. The festival features incredible amounts of confetti thrown out from large Dashi floats. Quite spectacular. 'Koromo' is the previous name of Toyota city.

This was a big festival in a small location. Many other festivals are spread out, but the spectacular bit here happens inside the temple and is very crowded.

With Pam in L.A., I went to this festival alone. Luckily I bumped into Bartek, Monica, Simon and Dawn which was a bit of luck.

I arrived at 3:30 and the main action started at 4:00 and went for about an hour. I would actually recommend getting there a bit earlier and getting a spot on the Toyota stadium side of the parked floats as close to the temple as possible.

As usual I did not know where to go and just followed the crowd. This was the first part of the parade that I saw and it ended up being the last float to arrive into the temple.

When I got to the temple it was very crowded with everyone jostling for position. The huge floats had people on top of them yelling and singing and throwing confetti and cheap packets of potato chips and other sweets down to the crowd.

I love the nose.

The crowd eager and excited

Hands up trying to grab presents tossed from the floats. If you look really closely you can see some of the stuff being tossed

The temple was dominated by a huge tree. You can see it in the background here

Pushing all the way inside the temple I got some great shots of the Dashi floats all lined up.

Ready to kick off. This is Float number 3.

You can see the debris from the first two floats on the ground

go go go

turn the corner and start dumping confetti. The all did this. Maybe I can get into the middle and take some better shots...Hmmm

Ok this time float number four. Could not get across

Go Go Go

Look.. why don't I just follow along instead

and have confetti dumped on me

and more

absolutely everywhere

Wow, that was pretty amazing

UM... and now I was part of the parade..not sure If I was meant to do this but hey, go with the flow. The crowd on either side were behind ropes and I and the others (who were those people) wandered behind the float.

The Dashi floats main enemy are the power lines that cover Japan's cities. The parade in Osaka had men with long poles who ran along and lifted the lines as the floats went by, This was a bit more Ad-hoc.

I escaped the parade and jumped into the crowd.

I watched the next float come past.

As usual they were careful about how much confetti they threw.

Actually from where I was standing I was getting confetti from the float AND from the people on the balcony above. There seemed to be constantly be confetti down the back of my shirt.