Kobe Matsuri

Quite a while ago, I think in the middle of May, the Kobe festival took place. I went there with a Chinese friend from the dormitory. It was very Kobe-ish, because it mainly consisted of a parade with a great variety of acts. There were several samba groups, some antique cars, folk dance groups from Korea, Okinawa, and China, and a lot of majorettes.

At one point a group of Jedi and those white soldier people came along waving their light sabers. A Sith was menacing the crowd while Emperor Palpatine (or what`s his name) was waving from the back of a pick-up truck. Next to him some guys where rocking their guitars. It was a group from Save Nippon, which I think is the main donation campaign for the earthquake disaster. There were more groups urging for donations, but this one was the most entertaining.

Though a group of people dressed up as food, from the city of Himeji, beating their drums was also very amusing.

While I tried to capture the fun on camera, I discovered I failed in my attempt. Most photo`s are focused on the crowd in front of me (even though most of them were smaller than me), so there`s not much to see of the parade.

The parade was pretty international, but there were a lot of food stalls, which made it very Japanese again. There also was a small train which children could take a ride in. A disproportionate number of uniformed conductors were standing in the middle of the track, which looked very funny. I wish I took a photograph of that.