Hachinohe Sansha Taisai Festival Part 2

We picked up an info sheet about the festival (in English). It says:

There is a Shinto shrine in Hachinohe called Ogami Jinja. The shrine's god is said to protect castles. In 1721, there was a particularly good harvest. In order to thank the god for the good harvest, a local lord took it to visit another god located at his ancestor's shrine nearby (Shinra shrine).

The god was carried in a gorgeous portable shrine and the people held a three-day festival. That parade and festival was the origin of what was to eventually become one of Tohoku's most beautiful festivals, Sansha Taisai.

The floats are made by different neighborhoods with sponsorships from local businesses in that neighborhood. The floats depict different scenes from Japanese folklore.

All the floats in this parade are pulled by hand. Which is amazing.

The detail on these floats is just amazing:

The costumed dancers were definitely our favorite thing. Alivia started hiding every time the Tiger Dancers came by though. Yes that is her screaming. 

This float was huge. It almost couldn't make the turn:

This is that float from the back. It also opened up on the sides and some sort of mechanical creature on the other side blew some steam. Very cool. 

"Enough with all the floats," Grandma says. "Show me some cute kids already!

Here is a cute little boy. He thinks he's big stuff with that fan:

And here's a cute little girl with some cotton candy:

Now back to the floats!

While this little group in the parade was stopped, this sweet old man came and stood right in front of S to play his instrument (called a chappa). 

It's really hard to stress what a big deal this parade was. We had never seen anything like it, and our minds were completely blown. We are completely ruined for American parades now. We stayed at the parade for over two hours and they were still going - probably for at least another hour, if not longer. The floats were amazing and we had a ton of fun. This is only a sampling of all the pictures and videos we took! It was so hard to choose, and I probably still chose too many.