Doya Doya?? ( i think)

I went to two festivals on the same day and can't remember what this one is called. It was at Tennoji in Osaka. First we went to a Kushi Katsu restaurant above daimaru in umeda for lunch with Mika's mum. I love kushikatsu. All that deepfried goodness. It's kind of like fish and chips but you cook it yourself in the middle of table as you want it. I had the mix pack. so some squid, salmon, prawns, beef, mushroom and some other vegetables.

Mika and her mum at lunch. you can see the deep fryer
in the middle of the table.

after lunch we went to tennoji for the festival. We got there about an hour before it started but it was already too busy to get a good spot for photos. Any festival in japan is full of amateur photographers with their full kit. Before i got a decent camera i would always get lens envy everytime i went to a festival but now i realise they're just trying to make up for being short :-). so the festival is something to do with luck (like every festival here). Young boys dressed in the undies run around in the middle of winter trying to catch pieces of paper while their teachers throw cold water on them. How much some of my teachers would have loved to do that to me. It was pretty funny and the teachers had a great time. Everyone let out a huge cheer everytime caught one of the lucky charms.

Here they are heading to the main temple. They all are screaming
yashoi ( i think, don't know what it mean)

here's the young kids. they didn't get any water thrown
on them though. notice the big yellow buckets of water on the left.

and lastly the fun part of the festival. it seems boys are more
likely to wear a g-string in japan than women.