Matsuri in Hiraoka.

We didn't have any special plan for yesterday. We had just some rough plan of visiting some tourist spot, but nothing defined.

On Friday morning we left Harashiyama and moved to Osaka, where in the evening we had a taiko class.

Our lodging is located in a shopping street in a not touristic part of the city, where foreigners are a rare sight.

After the class our teacher told us that in Hiraoka there would have been a festival in the weekend, and that it would have been a good chance for us to hear some original taiko.

So Saturday morning we have hopped on the train to reach Hiraoka. Once there we have started roaming the streets until we have stumbled upon 3 o-mikoshi departing for the ritual procession.

We have followed them until they have met other processions, where we have been given an explanation of the ceremony: 21 altars are carried on the shoulders of worshippers from the surrounding of the temple along the roads of the village up on the mountain where the temple is located. 

There are altars carried by men, by high school girls and high school boys, each of them accompanied by loud shouting and by a slow paced and imposing beat given from a taiko located at the center of the altar.

Seeing how these people are able to lift and carry these altars on the steep snd narrow road leading to the temple, and then shaking and twirling them once in the square in front of the tori sends shivers down the spine.

It didn't even matter that it was drizzling: they just protected the altars with plastic sheets and carried on with ritual.

We left before the ceremony was over, but the taiko beat still rumbles in our body.