Near the end of the spring holiday known as Golden Week in Japan, there is a city festival held in Hamamatsu. You tend to start using the odd Japanese word, even in English conversation, after having lived here for a few years-- so usually we just say matsuri- the Japanese word for festival.
We arrived and just enjoyed the buzz of the people. Soon, the people started lining the streets waiting for the parade. As the largest percentage of immigrants living in this city are Brazilian, it is natural that the beginning of the parade featured a Brazilian style mini-parade. 
At last, the matsuri people started to appear marching the streets and waving their flags. A very colorful assortment that represents each community.
Also you can see the group of people holding their lanterns (sorry I am forgetting the Japanese name for these), and people playing horns and blowing whistles to the tune of the local matsuri song. 
Finally, we see one of the first flags of the parade. The flags are a huge part of the festivities in the afternoon, I will talk more about them in another post soon! They are all huge and also colorful like the flags.
Most of the people are adorned in hapi - the festival jackets usually with one's community's name on the back. These ladies looks like it says something like mishima_something...More next post...
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