Okino-san and I left our accommodation at 10.30am and we rendezvous with 3 other ladies in Komaki and Nagoya Sakae.
It is around 11.50am when we catch a first glimpse of the parade. The first in line are the large mountain floats (山車揃). I suggested to them that we can walk towards the direction of City Hall so we can catch all the parade events while reducing the viewing time to 1 hour. If we were to stand on a spot and watch like the locals, the entire parade will be 2 hours long.
Here is the second item in the parade, the shrines (神楽揃).
Then we have the children's contingents (子ども会みこしパレード). Below is one of the cartoon characters shown in the movie this year - Poniyo Poniyo. It is extremely popular in Japan.
And the famous Doraemon.
Then we have representatives from all the sister cities of Nagoya (姉妹友好都市親善パレード).
Here is another contingent on cycles.
Next in line is the Flower Car Parade (フラワーカーパレード).
And we have the performers dancing on the street. I recorded a short video below to have a feel of how it is like viewing along the street.
From there, we took the subway from the City Hall station to Osu area. Today Osu is extremely vibrant with lots of people and festivities going around.
The girls started doing their shopping enthusiastically. We hanged around with them for a while before deciding to proceed on to the Osu Kannon temple and take a break there.
On the way back, we came upon the final segment of the parade which we missed earlier on - The Warriors Parade (郷土英傑行列). At the front of the contingent we have the foot soldiers.
This is followed by the next higher ranking warriors.
And here we have Hideyoshi Toyotomi. The second unifier of Japan.
There are also the 3 beauties. Here we have Ne-Ne. I recognised her as a warrior in the Samurai Warriors game.
The maidens accompanying Ne-Ne.
This is another one of the traditional Japanese beauties.
There are people dancing with the Warriors Contingent in the pedestrian shopping street. I recorded a short video of it below.
After Osu, we proceeded back to Sakae's Oasis21 to catch the performance there.
We arrived around 4.30pm and they were having performances from their sister cities.
There are a few booths and cultural exhibits in the area.
One of the second last performance is actually a new age mix between Indian and Japanese instruments.
We left Nagoya via the 6.30pm bus and got back to Tokadai for dinner.
