Lantern Festival

So, for the first two weeks of the Chinese New Year Nagasaki has a Lantern Festival that is more a cultural heritage celebration of Chinese influence than a coincidence with Chinese New Year. It also has nothing to do with the Lantern Festival for Chinese New Year. The festival is completely unique to Nagasaki and apparently generates a lot of tourism. It was funny explaining to visiting people that I live here and was not just visiting for the festival. Like most things in this part of the world it stems from tradition of removing bad things and ushering in good things, but as I said it is just a really beautiful time to visit (especially at night) and see all the lanterns. So this update will be largely photos with some videos.

 Lanterns are all over town!

 And of course the epicenter of it all is China Town

This is the park next to China Town where the events took place. Do you want to see inside?

 This is the main area where performances take place

 It's the year of the Dragon, you are going to be seeing a lot of these

 You could sit on this, I didn't, but you were permitted to

Here's a short video so you can see this think a little better

 

 This was some kind of Buddhist altar with pig heads, I'm not sure why as Buddhists are not permitted to eat meat in most sects.

Like I said before though, the real treat was at night:

Of course it wouldn't be a festival if there were not many performances to entertain. Here are a few of the more culturally relevant ones, including a few variants of the Lion dance which, in Japan, is unique to Nagasaki and this festival.

Here is the Dragon Dance performed by children:

Taiko drum performance:

A lion dance, not the true one:

Children's Lion Dance:

Lion Dance:

This was the only streamer explosion there was during the performance and I just happened to be taking a picture at the exact moment it burst, timing couldn't have been better.

We also watched the Emperor's Parade, mostly because one of your classmates (Lucy) was in it, she's the non-Japanese girl holding the lantern at the beginning of of the videos (in the first video she's all you see of the parade), I've included a picture so she's easier to pick out.

Short Video with Lucy:

Long Video of the Performance at Meganebashi:

Since it was raining the last day many people have on coats, here are some pictures from the day before of the Parade and some of the things that did not come to the bridge performance.

The other thing that was at the Lantern Festival were large 24 meter lanterns for the 12 Chinese Zodiac... except the snake, which I discovered after looking for it for nearly two hours.

Year of the Snake? This is all you get.

 This is the Ox, this is the first one I saw.

 Dragon

 Ram or Sheep

 Rabbit

 Pig

 Rat

 Tiger

 Rooster

 Monkey

 Dog

Horse

When I come back to Nagasaki for this festival in years to come I plan to go out more at night, maybe I'll even be able to complete my Zodiac lantern collection (if they ever build a big snake lantern). I'll close this entry with some random lanterns that I really liked during the festival.

 These on the water looked so much better at night, if it wasn't pouring rain I would have gone back out to get photos of these two displays after dark.

These fish were running all along the river display near Meganebashi (see earlier blog entry).

Well I hope you enjoyed the small taste, pictures don't really do it justice though, if you really want to see something great plan a trip out to Nagasaki at the end of next January.