Today started like many of the others. Matt went for a run and we got 7-Eleven for breakfast. Then we went to see two parades, the religious Shinto Flower & Shrine parade and the secular Gion Matsuri Float parade. We strategically stationed ourselves at a street corner to see both. The flower parade had kids with little shrines, wagons filled with geisha and people dressed with flower hats. The second parade, called the Yamaboko procession, had medium size floats (yama) and gigantic shrines (hoko). The giant shrines needed the street signals to be moved out of the way and were essentially three story wagons with a 40ft tree on top. The wheels didn’t allow turning so each corner was a feat of engineering and strength maneuvering the massive wagon.
Moody and Jo split to get more Onitsuka Tiger shoes and Lily and Melanie joined them (Moody getting two pairs, Jo getting another pair and Lily getting one as well). Matt, Bel and Charles went to get bao buns and dumplings from the popular “551” shop and went back to the hotel to eat.
Belinda then went out to shop with the rest of the shopping crew, while Charles and Matt chilled at the Hotel. Lily bought some clothes at Gu and Uniqlo.
Then we met up at the hotel and headed to TeamLab Vortex, an interactive art experience. It had an amazing assortment of exhibits, some were akin to an artsy fun house mirror, a 360-deg projector room that had you following space birds, a cloud room, a room that was like a alien planet and another with alien eggs and an “athletic forest” to run around. The music was all classical very zen music that really calmed the soul. It was a very cool and most importantly air conditioned activity.
We then went through the Nishiki market, where we were going to grab a bite to eat, but ended up getting trapped by hundreds of festival goers with a shrine and a couple horses. It was very cool to be caught up in the festivities.
We made it to our show with a little time to spare, so we grabbed some street food, including a meat skewer, a strawberry smoothie and giant sweet potato chips. Enough to hold us over through the show.
The Gear show was a 15yr running production whose story was set in a futuristic rundown factory ran by robots. Then a misplaced doll that the factory used to produce turned up and came to life. And when she touch the robots their creative selves emerged. One robots talent was break dancing, another’s was magic, one was juggling and the final one was pop-and-lock dancing. It was fun, especially when Moody was selected from the audience to participate in the magic show.
Then we went home and grabbed some snacks from… you guessed it, 7-Eleven!