More on the festival

 Right in the middle of the picture you can see one of the most important places during a festival. It is the beer stand, the cups are white on top and blue on the bottom.

 A main feature of the festival is little paper boats that hold a candle are represent the people who have died. In some festivals the relatives place the boat and candle in the water, but here the festival committee does it, so there is no one to one correspondence. The boats are of many different colors so the river is truly beautiful.

 People sit along the edge of the levee-top walkway so that they can get a good view of the fireworks.

 This shows more food and beer stalls. I did not stay around to see the fireworks, but instead went home.

 The next morning I went out for an early walk and found the site almost completely cleaned up. All of the trash was gone, the tents were being taken down, and by noon there would be no sign of the festival. One interesting point is that the tent in the foreground belongs to a different shrine from completely separate sect of Shinto. Generally Shinto and Buddhists sects do not compete but they all tend to cooperate.

The little paper boats have been collected the festival committee was burning them in a small bonfire.