祇園際：山鉾巡行 – Gion Festival: Yamaboko Junko

Today I woke up early in time to see the start of the parade for Gion Festival. The parade takes place between 9:00 and 13:00 and follows a 3 km route along Shijo, Kawaramachi and Oike streets.

The floats were really impressive, and amazingly detailed.  It looked like a total logistical nightmare for the police and traffic officers though, since it was still during the day, they couldn’t very well close off the streets to cars, so they had to coordinate the moving of the floats with the cars and the traffic lights and pedestrians and… yeah.  I felt really bad for them.  I arrived about 20-30 minutes early and was able to get a pretty good view.  People kept pushing though or trying to squeeze in, which wasn’t the most pleasant feeling.  I had to check out of the hotel by 11, so I couldn’t stay to watch the whole thing, which comprised of over 30 floats.  I did manage to watch at least a third of it pass by.

Some paid seating is provided in front of the city hall (3100 yen; advance booking required), but I discovered that if you keep walking along following the path for the parade, you’ll eventually get a really nice NON-CROWDED viewing spot.  The street’s pretty long.