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A beautiful dancer at one of the floats. She was so happy and talked with us a bit after her performance - she's a dance teacher here in town and has been dancing for her district (machi) for almost 2 decades!
Finally started going through my Nakatsu Gion Matsuri 「中津祇園祭り」photos. There is a week in summer where the city goes into overdrive for this festival. These giant festival floats, called “guruma,” are pulled around the town by teams of people, stopping regularly to showcase performances. There is one for each of the seven or eight districts surrounding the castle. The floats are then taken to the castle grounds, where they are raced in a circle around the courtyard at incredible (and very dangerous) speeds all by being pulled by ropes. The guruma have giant stone wheels that don't turn - instead, you have to turn them by pushing on a rudder type thing on the back (this takes four or five really strong guys to do) and is really exceptionally hard when going at high speeds!
