Day 6 - Yonabaru Tug of War Matsuri

Today it was a pretty lazy day to start with, we planned to do some stuff in the morning but eventually we ended up sitting in the hotel lobby for about 2 hours doing nothing but talking, a well deserved rest I guess :p

In the afternoon myself and Gwen headed for a small walk to find a Chinese garden, which eventually appeared to be inexistant because the area where is was supposed to be was a barren wasteland which was closed off by chains and a small gate.

In the late afternoon we took a taxi and went for the Tug of War Matsuri which was held in Yonabaru. Basicly it's a small version of Naha's Tug of War but it's held midsummer instead of in October. We had a bit of bad luck right when we got out of the taxi because it suddenly started raining like mad but luckily after 30 minutes it already stopped raining.

The participants moved 2 ropes of well over 10 meters length through the streets to the event court where they put the 2 pieces on the ground and connected both pieces with a huge toothpick (sort of xD). The main idea is that the West side of the town fights against the East side in a enourmous Tug of War game.



There were two rounds and in the end it resulted in a tie. After the Tug of War some people cut a piece of the rope off which is a charm for good luck. After all the performances there was fireworks which on my camera appearantly showed like:

"Red Lightning":


Tomorrow we will be leaving for Hakata (a small flight of only 2 hours).