On October 10th, my friends and I went to
Sawara, Chiba, for their
biannual town festival! This festival has a history of more than 300 years.
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| Onogawa River running through Sawara |
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| Visitors to the Sawara Festival can arrive by boat! |
Sawara has two festivals throughout the year, the Fall Festival and the Summer Festival. It's famous for their towering doll
dashi, or festival floats.
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| Citizen's pulling the doll festival floats. Some of them weigh more than 2 tons! |
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| Pulling them through the streets of Sawara |
Walking around Sawara gives visitors a sense of going back in time, since the shops and buildings haven't changed for hundreds of years. Many of the shops now are still as they were more than 100 years ago.
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| Visitors can also arrive by train at Sawara Station |
The Sawara Festival (Fall especially) is one of my favorite festivals in Japan, since visitors can see traditional Japan wherever they look. I always see and learn something new every time that I go! Plus there is a lot of delicious food here!
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| Chocolate Banana sold at stall |
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| Sweet Potato Ice Cream! Tasted just like Japanese sweet potato |
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| Fan Dance |
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| Floats lit up at night |
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| Even young children help pull the floats! So cute! |
In addition to the doll festival floats, Sawara is also famous for
sake and for a shop that makes black
soba (buckwheat) noodles. I've never tried the
soba noodles, but their
sake is delicious! If you get a chance, please try their
Doburoku sweet sake!
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