Around the World

Aomori (meaning blue forest) is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tohoku region of Japan. It is only 318 sq miles with a population of 275,00 people but is considered one of the commercial centers in Japan.

What is Amoria known for? One of its claims to fame is the Fuji apple (a cross between the American Red Delicious and old Virginia Talls Janet), grown in the 1930s and finally brought to the international market in 1962. You may remember Daisuke Matsuzaka, a Japanese former professional baseball pitcher, who pitched professionally for 23 seasons, 16 of them in NPB, 7 in MLB (currently a baseball commentator). He is the first player to have won both a World Series and a World Baseball Classic, winning the 2006 World Baseball Classic with Team Japan and the 2007 World Series with the Red Sox (and played for the NY Mets 2013-14).

Aomori has hosted several international curling events, two in 2003 and represented Japan at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy and at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The REAL Highlight of Aomori!

Since the 1600’s, The Aomori Nebuta Matsuri Parade has been the highlight of the Japanese summer festival which became an annual parade in 1792. According to the tradition, the parade is to ward off the sleep demons which are the enemies of farmwork (which can cause drowsiness during the busy farming season).

We visited the Nebuta Museum WA-RASSE (meaning chant and laughter), to learn about the history and beauty of the Aomori Nebuta Festival. On display are full-sized floats that participated in the last festival and Nebuta Faces that show the individuality of their respective creators.

The museum stores last years’ 4 best floats. In the museum we learned about the master designers, the process, saw real floats, got to feel the components and see what they look like inside the float when being built, heard the performance of the festival songs and even got to do the festival dances!

Local teams build the festival's 22 floats, which are constructed of painted washi paper over a wire frame and take a year to design and construct. They are on average 22’ in length, 29’ wide & 16’ tall and often depict gods, historical or mythical figures from both Japanese and Chinese culture, kabuki actors, and characters from popular TV. Often it is based on a scene from kabuki.

The floats are sometimes 4 stories high and weigh 30,000 lbs and cost over $50k. They are constructed on wheeled platforms and are each PULLED by 300 people along the parade route.

Aomori had to move their power and telephone lines to allow the safe passage of the floats through town (today, they are still limited by the height of new wires). The floats are assembled in a tall warehouse with a four-story door that opens for the floats.

The process: Artists research a new theme and design, they begin the production of float arms and legs, temporary studios are built to house them for a year, the wire structure is put on the wooden framework, additional wire is tied with cotton thread for strength, a 1000 lights are put on each float so there is no shaded areas from the inside, next they paste papers on each grid, then draw faces and wrinkles, put melted paraffin wax to make the paper translucent and stop running colors, lastly they add pigments and dyes with brushes and sprays and then they are ready for the PARADE!

We saw Nebuta masters exhibit, the creators of large nebutas are called Nebutashi, or nebuta masters. They are the specialists who decide the basic design, the entire structure and colors of nebutas. Every year after the Nebuta Festival, the masters start planning the next year’s nebutas, completing the first draft of design during the winter. There are only 4 masters that are honored here for there many years of contributions to the festival.

The music was led by the taiko, fue, and teburigane instruments. The haneto dancers performed for us to simulate the event.

Millions attend and view the new floats annually. Every night during the festival the floats are wheeled out onto the streets of downtown Aomori for a parade. The floats are pushed along the street by human power, weaving back and forth, and spinning around for the crowd. Each float is accompanied by teams of taiko drummers, flute and hand cymbals players, as well as hundreds of dancers, called haneto, who follow the procession chanting "Rassera, Rassera" while performing a dance that looks a little bit like skipping.

What a fun visit this was and so different from everything else we have done on our entire trip.Read more