三社祭 Sanja Matsuri 2012 浅草 東京

Finally got around to this post !
I’m sorry that it took this long to get this done but you know that the WiFi in Aomori was not that fast to upload all these photos.

Sanja Matsuri which means “three shrine festival”, it’s one of three biggest Shinto festivals in Tokyo area. The festival lasts three days and it is held yearly on the third weekend of May.

The festival is for the honor for Hinokuma Hamanari, Hinokuma Takenari and Hajino Nakatomo, three men who founded Senjo-ji Temple.

Sanja Matsuri is mostly about people carrying portable shrines called Mikoshi for three days but on the third day they bring out the three biggest Mikoshi which makes the other mikoshi look small.
That what the festival is famous for but I loved the part that came after which was all the parties, Japanese people drunk everywhere and lots of fun and making new friends.

You could even see a lot of Yakuza there who are some of the biggest supporters of this event. I got some amazing photos of them.

Everyone should add this event to their bucket list!!

I’ll be making two different post of this festival because the amount of photos I have from there.
First one which is this post will be about the festival and the second one will be about all the food and drinks they had in there!

In my flickr you can find 170 photos from there so check out more in my flickr site ! Ari Helminen in Flickr

I’ll do my best not to make this post too long.

I saw japanese school students posing for a photographer so I decided to snap a shot too.

Beautiful Sky Tree.

One of the best festivals in the world !

This is probably the cutest thing I saw at that festival.

三社祭

Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) at Sanja Matsuri. Yakuza is part of the Japanese culture and way of life. Without Yakuza many of these beautiful festivals would not be around any more. They were nice enough to pose for couple of photos after they were done with carrying the Mikoshi.

I took a lot of photos of them because I love their tattoos and just because they are Yakuza. See more photos of them in my flickr page.

You can see that I wasn’t the only one excited

People tired after all the carrying.

Doing this all day will make you tired.

if you were wondering how many people are in this festival, during the three days 1.5 to 2 million locals and tourists every year. You are wondering what that looks in a photo ?

I’d love to try carrying this all day. Probably I would die half way tho but would be an experience.

Couple more Yakuza photos. Sorry that there are so much, I’m just so happy I got these photos.

Was a very beautiful day for the festival.

All through the festival there were these wagons with singers and players which made the mood of the festival so much better.

Here are some close up photos of the people who were carrying the shrines.

This guy was cool !

not surprising that legs hurt after everything.

Let the drinking start!

I truly hope that you liked these photos! check out my flickr to see much much more.

If you liked these photos, “like” my facebook page !