三社祭の食物 Food of Sanja Matsuri

This is the second part of the Sanja Matsuri. I wanted to make a whole post about food because one post that would have everything would be too big.

I will apologize because I’m 100% sure that after you have seen these photos you will be dying of hunger.

I’m not sure about the names of some of these foods but food is food names doesn’t matter 😀
I’ll try to add the names later with some Japanese help hehe.

Delicious burger ! I ate one and NAAAAM ;D

This must be good too

I LOOOVE Corn !


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Doesn’t all of them look mouth watering !! I’m getting more hungry by just writing this post
So that was what people ate but what people drank well I got an answer to that too 😀

Big blocks of ice preventing the drinks getting warm

and more drinks coming in since it was a warm day and everything was getting sold fast.

If you liked this post like my facebook page ! photographer ari helminen

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 !

Sky Tree & Party in Shinjuku

This day was awesome because I had a party with my friends whom I haven’t seen for a while and also I visited the mall of Sky Tree Solamachi with my girl.

Since my girl wasn’t in Tokyo for the grand opening of the sky Tree she wanted to visit there before we left to Aomori and after 40 minutes walking around the shops there I had to take her to get that smoothie/shake shop I found on my last visit there.

I had my favorite which of course is Strawberry shake

and she had the pineapple one.

I preferred mine tho since mine was more sweeter 😛

Later that day we went to omote sando to shop some clothes and after that we went to Shakeys pizzeria. (you know I love that place)(we don’t care about the pizza that much but the onion rings are the best)

In the evening we had our party at a Izakaya called Wara Wara in Shinjuku.
Always happy to see friends and make new ones at these parties !

This is actually kinda funny, I normally love wasabi but this evening my throat was hurting so eating it was a little bit more difficult than I thought.

1st. This is me with the Wasabi before I ate it. ( you can see there is quite a lot of it)

2nd.Ok so now it’s in my mouth, all good so far..

3rd. Here it got me since I could not swallow it and the hotness was getting higher and higher. Luckily I had a nice cold beer in my hand to help.

Normally, like now I could eat that piece of wasabi and not blink an eye.. just saying 😀

Here are some food photos of what we were eating.

Don’t you just love these things at the izakayas? 10 minutes after the tray arrives to the table, it’s empty.

If any of you are ever in Tokyo while I’m there and not busy, send me a message and you might get invited to one of my great parties 😀

for the last note, have you noticed that in Japan they have changed the sprite can for “older” looking design. I normally don’t drink sprite but the cool looking can made me get one.

New years in Japan!

おはようございます!

Okay this post is kinda late but still I know you’ll love it !

The photos in this post will be from the days between 30th to first of January I hope you enjoy them.

If you were reading my blog when I was in Aomori you should have seen this beautiful cat called Chibi.

She looks so cute when she is sleepy!

Close up photo !

The convenience stores were very intelligent to make this glass box in front of their main door so snow would not be coming in. Also the parking lots were full of hot water all day so it would not freeze.

Took some photos at the New years table for you so you can see what a normal Japanese new years food is. Warning you will get hungry when seeing the food!

Deeeeelicious ! Would you like to eat any of this ?

I have to say that there was a lot of food! the 31st we started eating about 3-4pm and ended the evening at 2am and the party continued for the next few days.

If you have any questions of what is what just ask 😀

I also took some photos at the store of the different dishes, you can see that they are not that expensive either.

Check how cheap coca cola is in north Japan.

… 138yen for 1,5L bottle

If you are in Japan or going to Japan I’d recommend you to try this ice cream, you can find it pretty much everywhere!

Since my girlfriends old room did not have a working tv, so I was watching tv through her phone!

ps. that is a great tv show with Takeshi Kitano.

Now you are wondering why I haven’t taken much photos with my Nikon, well it was snowing quite a bit!

Happy new year from Aomori,Japan あけましておめでとうございます。青森、日本

Happy new year from Japan!

I’m still here in Aomori, now partying with my girlfriends family.

The year has been great to me mostly because I have been 6months in Japan this year!
Took some photos of the table that was full of Japanese food!

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I took better photos with my Sony again that you will see later!
Hopefully all of you will have a peaceful new years and don’t drink too much! (I’m pretty much passed my limit with all the sake,asahi and drinks!)