Japanese cities have these festivals they celebrate, in which the townspeople turn out to eat street food, dance, check out crafts and the like. These sorts of community get-togethers are part of the reason that USians get nostalgic for “olden tymes” when people gathered for 4th of July fireworks or parades—now, of course, some communities still have these things; ours, not so terribly long ago, had a Heritage Festival (usually in late August) though it's sadly defunct. Art fairs, if they get big enough, can take on this role. Carnival would be another example...

A while back some org or other had workshops on creating lightweight sculpture and/or costumes that could be lit from within,^[1] around which this Halloween street festival was originally based; and though this year those seemed to be less in evidence than the easy-to-use glow sticks and the like, it was a lively time, with assorted musical groups on stage, metallic-coloured mimes, LED hula performers and fairy-lit belly dancers. Plus of course lots of costumes!^[2]

N.b., I don't normally post pix of people, but I think this falls under the street interest rule—kinda the whole point of this celebration was to be seen in one's costume, after all:)

I had gone to this in the past, vowing someday to come back with a real camera, capable of dealing with the low light.

But because of COVID, it's been years. Which means, in addition to the sony, I also happen to have a new phone, & it too did a surprisingly good job; in fact I took what is probably my favourite image with it:

After about 45 minutes, I was tired, and I didn't get good pix of any of the awesome acts—there were drag queens doing fab performances when I left—but there's always next year.^[3]

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn