Osaka’s Summer Festivals! Hot! Hot! Hot!
The month of July in Osaka, Japan marks the start of the Summer Festival season. Every week in the month of July, there is a new summer festival in different parts of the city. Some summer festivals are very small and local to the neighborhood or area. The summer festival featured in this post is local to my neighborhood in a part of the city called Teradacho.
Summer festivals all feature a wide variety of food and drinks. The food stands are referred to as ‘yatai’ in Japanese and are small stands with local delicacies, with both savory and sweet varieties.
Summer festivals offer entertainment, food, and drinks for the whole family. In fact, going to summer festivals, or ‘matsuri’s’ as they’re called in Japanese are just as much for children as they are for adults. Many of the stands at the festivals are games made for children of all ages and adults beware, cause they can consume money faster than a shark tearing into tuna.
This is one example of a game stand that is aimed at children who are in elementary school. The Japanese awards are actually made of wood and are artistically decorated and carved. I doubt very seriously that any child actually won any of the ornate beautiful swords featured. Most of the time they use those to lure people into playing the game, with no chance of winning. Most will win the inflated tubes that kids can play with like swords with their friends.
Another common and popular game is fishing for goldfish. Adults and children alike love this game. In this game, you’re given a paper hoop that tears easily when wet.
This is a variation with shrimp instead of goldfish.
And this is yet another variation with small crabs.
Summer Festivals are an integral part of Japanese culture, however, festivals aren’t only limited to summertime. There are festivals in autumn and winter as well. Most of the festivals in Japan revolve lightly around religion, and most feature a ‘mikoshi’, which translates to the portable shrine in English. They are usually big, loud, and ornate
Whether or not you attend a summer festival for the food, drinks, religion, or fun; I promise you will have a great time! A pro tip: stop at a local convenience store for drinks because it will be a lot cheaper than what you will pay for them from the stands at the festival. A super pro tip: go to a local 100 yen shop and buy a cheap cooler to carry your drinks in, as it is hot and your cold drinks will get warm before you finish drinking them without a cooler.
As you can see from this picture, juice is ¥300 and beer is ¥600 for 350ml. At the convenience store, the same beer is less than ¥200 and the juice would only be about ¥160!
Summer Festivals are amazing and wonderful! If you ever get the chance to go to one, I highly recommend that you go! You won’t regret it! Until next time, cheers!
