Japan's cookie-cutter summer festivals
Japanese people looove food. They love it over everything – up to the point where you sometimes get annoyed over how dull conversations often end up being, because food is simply the main thing many people talk about.
Nowhere does this become more apparent than at one of the abundant summer festivals. Wherever you go around Tokyo these days, there’s a good chance you’ll bump into one of them. Their setup follows a very simple, yet distinct scheme every time (in this order of priority!):
- Food stands
- Beverage stands
- Someone singing/dancing on stage
They usually also feature some kind of theme to them (“Samurai festival”, “Foreign beer festival”, etc.), which basically only determines who dances/sings what on stage. Other than that, one is not able to spot a difference.
Et voilà, there you have the seemingly favourite past time of many people on the weekends. It always boggled my mind how some people would go out of their way to visit silly street food festivals in Europe. Turns out it’s even more popular in Japan.