Coming of Age Day and Ebisu Festival (The Hyogo Version)
We knew it is “coming of age day” so we expected to see many girls in kimono on the streets but what we didn’t expect is to end up in the center of coming of age day and Ebisu (the god of fisherman and luck) festival. It was pure luck to decide to go to Hyogo looking for a new trendy area. Instead from the train we spotted something wich was resembling a matsuri (festival) so we decided to explore it.
First I will start with the photos from our camera:
There were many different kind of lucky charms but we bought fukusasa – a bamboo branch with many lucky charms loaded on it (3000 yen by the way). Apparently fukusasa are typical for the Ebisu festival. Our one was plastic though.
Here is the video (I think the ritual is for bringing luck and prosperity):
All the rest of the photos are from our iPhones. They are mainly from the streets surrounding the main shrine where the matsuri was going on (by the way the name of the area is Nishiyanagiwaracho – just a few hundred meters from Hyogo JR station). On some of them you can see the charms they were selling. As I said there were many different kinds of them and one of our main task in the near future will be to identify them all.
It was really reach of Shinto traditions experience day. We realized that we got wrong some of the rituals. For example you are supposed to tie your paper fortune (omikuji) to the tree only if you do not like it (we did it anyway last time as we thought this is the right way to do it). A lot still left to learn :)
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