Uraja - the Demon festival

This weekend was introduced with the annually highly expected fireworks around Okayama castle. I gathered with Machi, Sten, and three other friends in Korakuen (後楽園), where we had a beautiful view on the castle and watched the exploding rockets. Two years ago I was watching this spectacle at the Asahi river (旭川) among a huge crowd. Since there is at the moment a light festival in Korakuen (後楽園) and not so many people (but still way more than usually) went to the park, we enjoyed the night in the park much more than at the crowded river bank; nibbling on our bottle of wine.

Beginning of the fireworks at 19.30

Final rockets at 20.30

On Sunday the festival in Okayama continued! This festival is called "Uraja" (うらじゃ), the festival of the Demons and marks a feast that was introduced in Okayama 1994. Along the main road in front of the main station, groups from all over Okayama gather and dance from the afternoon until 9 pm. They paint their faces and dress in colourful clothes to become demons! But why demons? 

One of the most famous stories about and around Okayama is the story of Momotarou (桃太郎) - the peach boy. That's probably also the reason why the peach price in Okayama varies from 5 to 10 Euro per peach (o.o)7. You can read about the story here. Since Machis friend "Poly" danced in a group at the festival, Machi, Joe, "Polies" boyfriend Yoshipi, and I went of course in to the city to see all the dancing children and growing ups. The last two months in Okayama were pretty hot and humid, but "thanks" to a Taifun in the south of Japan, the wind was rather strong yesterday and gave us some cooling. At 9 pm all groups and visitors gathered and danced together on the street. I can't tell how many people were there, but south and north along the street I could only see folks, dancing together. I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

Break for young dancers!

And Poly

It must have been pretty hard to dance all afternoon for the little ones.

Yoshipi and Poly.

Final dance with everyone at 9 pm.

People gathered to dance together!

I tried to capture the atmosphere during the folk dance with my iphone, but blogspot has somehow problems uploading the mov file - I apologise for the bad converted version: