In past years, Ohara Matsuri has been a two-day dance/parade event in November. Generally, companies would field groups of people to do traditional Japanese dancing Saturday evening, from about 7 PM to 9 PM, running through Tenmonkan on Streetcar Street, for about half a mile to City Hall. Every 15-20 minutes there would be breaks to let the dancers get free cups of tea and shochu (a kind of distilled sweet potato liquor), that was also available to the audience (very watered down). On Sunday, there'd be dancing by children from various schools, and marching bands. This year, Ohara consisted of a bit of dancing from 10 AM to about 12:30 PM on Wednesday morning (Wednesday being a national holiday). No alcohol, and almost no audience.
I'd gotten to bed late Tuesday night, and I couldn't get back up until almost noon. I got out of the apartment by 12:30 PM, and arrived at Tenmonkan just as the PA system was announcing the end of the event. The support staff and some of the paraders were given a few minutes to pose for photos before the streets had to be cleared and reopened to car traffic.
Extremely boring and disappointing compared to past years.
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