フェニックス祭: Phoenix Festival

The city of Fukui has seen its share of tragedy in the past century. Bombing from American warplanes ruined the landscape during WWII, a devastating earthquake years later brought more destruction and just a few years ago heavy flooding damaged property along the river that runs through town. Thus, rather than move far far away as most human beings would, Fukui residents have adopted the Phoenix as their symbol and hold a city festival every year to celebrate everything that has been rebuilt from ash and rubble.


The phoenix, as a symbol of rebirth, even appears on manhole covers throughout Fukui. Oddly enough, I've found that Japan has some very nice manhole covers. For example, in Nagoya they often portray Nagoya castle. This contrasts drastically with the cover a few friends and I found in Kentucky once labeled, "Grease Trap: Hoe of KY". Those are my toes, by the way, and I took the photograph using the 3.2 mega pixel camera in my cell phone and subsequently emailed the picture to myself. And that was a pretty standard phone. *Ahem* I like Japan.

Anyway, the festival is really quite nice. There's all sorts of fried octopus and noodles and fruit stands about the main strip of town (aptly named after the phoenix), and all throughout the weekend various groups perform dances and beauty contests and such.
Lots of folks come to the festival in traditional Japanese garb.

And not all of them are foreign tourists.