Important festival ingredient

Here are some people using a couple of coolers to sell one of the important ingredients to any Japanese festival - beer. Drinking in public is generally acceptable in Japan, but especially at festivals where there is always at least on shop selling beer. For Shinto festivals sake, Japanese rice wine, is an important part of the ceremony. I have posted pictures of the New Year activities at one of the local shrines in Sendai. After paying your respects to the enshrined god and making wishes for the coming year, you are given a cup of sake. When I lived in Shizuoka prefecture, we had a yearly three-day festival during which most of the men, yours truly included, spend the three days definitely under the influence of a huge amount of sake and bee.

Here the price of a can of beer is 300 yen which is quite reasonable for this sort of festival. Many restaurants will charge as much or more. The pink sign over the man's head, says canned beer, 300 yen. The first character on the left means can or canned and the other three spell out beer phonetically.