Happy Birthday to me!

Well, I'm 23 now. There's not much else to say about that. I'm just getting older. However, I did have a wonderful birthday. Some friends and I went to a festival in the prefecture just up the coast from Shimane. The festival is called the Gaina festival and it takes place in the city of Yonago. The festival is actually hard to explain....so, bear with me.

Different groups (people from the same company or organization) make these lantern-bamboo-things.
They tie all these lanterns to a bamboo structure(?). But everything is tied onto a main bamboo pole. Then each group member takes a turn to balance the bamboo-lantern-thing (sorry, I forgot the name) on their hand, shoulder, or chin. Everyone else cheers on the person balancing. For those looking for a real challenge, additional poles can be attached to the main pole to make it higher. But this usually resulted in disaster. I saw a couple lantern-bamboo-things fall onto buildings, on traffic lights, and get tangled in phone lines.


The overall festival was pretty amazing. The entire street was filled with these huge things waving in the air. Special festival music was played up and down the street. Definitely one of the coolest events I have experienced in Japan.