"Stone, Bamboo, & Earth"

I stumbled upon a local festival in Tokyo at a mostly unknown (outside of the area) small temple and found myself standing on the bare earth (no concrete! no asphalt!), watching the festival people beat drums, etc. as they walked down a stone path - past a grove of bamboo - and without banks of florescent lighting destroying the atmosphere with too much harsh and ugly light. All this in Tokyo! There was some electric lighting, casting a radioactive greenish glow (hey, this is Tokyo after all, where nearly every square meter of the entire place is over-lit in one way or another), but there were actually some dark spaces among the trees (darkness at night! in the shade! imagine the novelty!) where you could feel a trace of wind from past centuries animating the event.

All-in-all, it was about as good as a festival gets here, because usually, any kind of cultural festival like that in Tokyo is overrun with tourists, both foreign and domestic. Out of respect, I didn't hang around too long, but I took a video clip of part of the event, tossed it onto the wires, and it can be seen here:

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://uk.youtube.com/lylehsaxon