Chagu Chagu Umakko Festival

Since this is my last summer in Misawa, I've been trying to experience as much of Japan as possible. So when I heard about the Chagu Chagu Umakko Festival down in Morioka, I jumped at the opportunity to check it out. The festival was established to honor the horses that have been working so hard in the rice planting. Japanese families deck their horses out in elaborate coverings with ribbons and bells and parade them from a shrine in the mountains through the streets of Morioka to another shrine in the center of the city. We figured it would be a great opportunity to snap some amazing photos. Plus, the guys had just taken off for Vegas so I looked forward to a day away with friends.

The only down side to this festival was that it starts early in the morning and we had to drive two hours to get there. So we planned to get up early and leave Misawa around 7:00 am. Unfortunately, the day didn't start as planned. It was raining. I accidentally slept through my alarm so we got a much later start than we intended. (The other girls didn't mind because they were out late the night before and needed the extra time to get ready.) But because we were running late, we didn't make it to the first shrine in time for the start of the parade.

Normally, running late to a festival wouldn't matter. But this was a moving festival in a city we've never visited before. So we were lost without a clue of how to find the horses again. Thankfully, Shelley has taken some Japanese and knew the word for horse. So we found a hotel with pictures of the festival posted on the outside and were able to ask a man there "Where are the horses?" He provided a very handy map with the parade route and times that they would be passing by each point on the map. So we chose to park by the Morioka train station and found a spot on the side of the street just in time for them to pass by.

It was still cold and wet outside, but that didn't detract from the beauty of these Japanese horses. The colors were so bright and their bells jingled merrily as they walked. The little children riding on their backs tried to smile and wave at the crowd in spite of the weather. I was surprised how young some of the kids were that they had mounted on those horses. But the Japanese people must really respect and trust their horses to put an 18 month old child on their backs.

Even the ponies got special treatment!

We got some good shots during the five minutes that the horses walked past. But once the parade was over, we had a moment of indecision. We spent three hours and a lot of toll money trying to find these horses, so we wanted to get a good return on our investment! Just as we took off down the sidewalk trying to catch up with the parade, we noticed that there was some sort of performance going on in the plaza in front of the train station. I glanced over to check it out and, thankfully, noticed that they had a couple of horses in full Chagu Chagu gear on display that you could take pictures with! So we were doubly blessed with a display of traditional Japanese dancing and some one-on-one time with the horses.

Incredible detail!

This little girl sitting on the back of the horse did not seem to be enjoying sitting in the rain

By this time we were pretty hungry and needed something to warm us up. So we stopped for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants: CoCo Curry! The nearest one to us is in Hachinohe (which is a 45 minute drive). So this was a real treat! I don't think they get many Americans in their shop down in Morioka so the staff seemed amused by our antics. It took us forever to decide which type of curry we wanted, so they were concerned that we couldn't read the menu and went through a lot of effort to dig up an english menu. Then they thought it was funny that we wanted to take pictures of our food. But CoCo curry is a big deal and I wanted a photo!

After lunch, we rounded out our trip with a visit to the mall. Our original intention was to get some Starbucks since they have a REAL Starbucks there. But we were so stuffed from lunch that we were satisfied with some accessory shopping instead. Definitely a great girls day out!