Today we had a chance to go to our first matsuri as residents of Japan: the Setagaya Firefly Festival. It sounded really cool when I found it on the Internet, but in fact, it was a pretty small neighborhood matsuri. The draw of this matsuri was the fireflies, which they brought in netted cages as well as a big darkened tent you could walk through and see their pulsing glow in the darkness. If you rarely or never see fireflies, it was totally cool. Many Tokyo dwellers who can’t get out to the deep countryside probably never see fireflies anymore.

The taiko troupe that performed was very talented and the rain gave pause for them to give the crowd a treat for about 20 minutes as the opening ceremony. Then it was off to sample the delicious festival foods like dango and takoyaki. Jeremy and Ayumi tried some interesting looking candy that was frozen on a block of ice.

We had the pleasure of having many members of Jayne’s family join us, so it was a good chance to hang out and catch up with everyone for the evening. Of course Japanese festivals are plentiful throughout the summer months (there’s one in the park across from our church tomorrow too) so we’ll be enjoying these for at least the next month or so!