Takayama Festival

This town has 100,00 residents but twice a year, one of them in two weeks' time, another 300,000 arrive for the big event, a parade of local neighborhood floats. They are magnificent creations all adorned and carved, drawn by 30 men under the iron bases and some 30ft high. The front one, which has been going since the 17th century holds the big drum and two flute players sit on the platform about 20 feet up. Neighborhoods created these to fight fires in past ages, and it's a competition between them all now. At night they are festooned with lanterns, it must be quite a spectacular sight. We had to rearrange our trip to avoid that time, already fully booked in June, but we enjoyed visiting the museum to see 6 of the floats and watch the video of the festival. 

  Takayama also has an ancient city administrative centre that has been lovingly restored and describes life in medieval Japan and the taxation system based on robbing the farmers of excessive quantities of their rice, which led to a massive revolution eventually - isn't that what happens in mall suppressed societies?