Japan Photo Guide

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Like Nebuta and Tachi Neputa, Neputa is a giant float festival in Aomori Prefecture. Neputa takes place in the city of Hirosaki from August 1st to August 7th. If you want to see all 3 of the float festivals, Hirosaki isn’t a bad place to stay because it is kind in between the two other festivals (it is kind of a long trip from Aomori City, where Nebuta is, to Goshogawara, where Tachi Neputa is).

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Tachi Neputa takes place about the same time as Nebuta, in Goshogawara, from August 4th-8th. Like Nebuta Matsuri, Tachi Neputa Matsuri is a night festival where extremely large floats are carried around in a parade like fashion. The difference is in the “tachi” which actually means “standing” in Japanese. So instead of large, wide floats like at Nebuta, here you can see really tall ones. The floats can be as big as about 70 feet (22 meters) and weigh around 15 tons!

Nebuta Matsuri is a lot more famous, but I actually prefer Tachi Neputa.

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Nebuta Matsuri, in Aomori Prefecture, is considered to be one of Tohoku’s best festivals. Apparently a lot of people think so because last year an estimated 3.7 million people came to see it! Nebuta takes place from August 2nd to the 7th every year and after living in Japan for a few years I will finally have the chance to go this year in 2007. There are actually 3 festivals in Aomori at about the same time and all of them are similar, but slightly different. The three are:

• • Nebuta in Aomori(most famous and has huge lantern floats)
  • Neputa in Hirosaki (smaller fan shaped lanterns)
  • Tachi Neputa in Goshogawara (instead of huge wide lanterns, this one has really tall ones…up to 22 meters and 16 tons!)

One thing you need to know about Nebuta is that it is REALLY crowded. If you are just a spectactor it might not matter as much, but if you are a photographer, you should do one of the following things to be able to get an unobstructed view:

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