Terukuni Shrine had its Rokugatsu-gou celebrations Monday and Tuesday night. While the shrine website said that it would run from late morning to 10 PM, in fact this is a night festival, and setup of the food booths didn't even start until 5 PM. I swung by Terukuni at about 3 PM, took photos of the better lanterns, then walked over to Tully's coffee shop in Tenmonkan to kill time.
Notice the little gash in the hill of Shiroyama, behind the shrine grounds.
This is one of the small landslides that panicked everyone in Kagoshima during the heavy rain a couple Wednesdays ago. Since the overgrowth isn't very thick over the hills here, there's nothing stopping the slides if the rain gets at all heavy. Nothing to worry about, though. Yet.
The big lanterns have light bulbs inside, the smaller ones use candles. One side has advertising, the other has artwork from various school kids.
I think the artwork is a bit easier to make out in the daylight, instead of at night. These are the ones I was more impressed by. Disney was really popular this year, but there were a few Snoopy's too.
Rokugatsu-gou is a month-long period that is celebrated by most of the larger shrines in Kagoshima prefecture at different times and in different ways. For Terukuni, there are 4 main elements. First are the lanterns, second is praying at the shrine up ahead in the above photo. Third is visiting all the food and toy booths set up on the street leading to the shrine entrance, and fourth are the live stage performances, below.
There's also a small ikebana (flower arrangement) display toward the back, but there's never been that much to take photos of in past years.
Monday was a national holiday, and I've never seen the crowds so thick before. There easily had to be a couple thousand people here and spread out into nearby Central Park at any given time. Tuesday was a normal working day, and I had classes from 5 to 9 PM. When I got back here a little after 9 Tuesday night, the crowd was maybe 10% of what's in the above photo.
One of the big lanterns in Tenmonkan.
The performances can be classified as hula, traditional Japanese dance, and some pop. In past years, some of the street dance studios performed hard rock dances, but I didn't see any of those mentioned in the schedule this time.
A taiko group from Izumi. Two of the members are foreign English teachers.
The last act of the first night was Wicky Toshi and his wife Kana, with a stand-in guest on guitar (I saw this guest at the Kagoshima Music Fest a couple months ago, but I don't know his name).
Lanterns at night.
Some of the food booths sell these soft drinks in the shape of an incandescent light bulb, with flashing LEDs at the bottom. Apparently they can't be used for anything else when you're done with the drink, so it results in a massive amount of plastic waste afterward.
Tuesday night, I returned to Central Park from the school after my last lesson. The big lantern tower here is for Ogionsa, which will run July 20 and 21. This is the mikoshi (portable shrine) parade that runs through Tenmonkan. On Saturday, it's just the mikoshi being taken through the shopping arcade and the porters being blessed by various Shinto priests. There should be some taiko performances and maybe some foamhead mascot stage shows here in Central Park. The main parade will be on Streetcar Street on Sunday.
Yoko was half way through her set when I got to the Rokugatsu-gou stage. She was doing straight pop karaoke, so I took a few photos and returned home for dinner.
I may try visiting one of the other shrines if I can, to see what else those locations have going on.
I only took one video this time, of the taiko group based in Izumi.
Direct youtube link
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