Inoko Matsuri

At the end of a long tumultuous day of good and exciting things and stressful things and too many feelings, we finally made it out to try to find the Inoko Matsuri-- Inoshishi (Boar) festival-- to celebrate the boar who protects from the dangers of fire.

So here's how it goes: first they ceremoniously make mochi for the emperor to make him nice and strong. And then they take it in a procession headed up by two lanterns on poles and a big slow pounding drum in the dark to the imperial palace (although, yes, the emperor lives in Tokyo now and hasn't lived here for 150 years. Habits die hard.) After that, when the procession gets back to Go'o shrine they start making mochi for everybody! And we all can get in line to pound the mochi, which I did, and there is an awesome childlike song we all sing while pounding. 

We ran into Imagawa sensei and a bunch of gakuen students too.

 It all looks like this: