Following a long day on Miyajima Island, we had a heads up from our G Adventures What's App group about a lantern festival that was happening in the Hiroshima Castle precinct. So, with very little extra information except for a location we smashed it all the way to the castle island complex.

Now, I wasn't joking when I said I had no background information, so I did some retrospective research. Here goes...

First, it isn't called 'the lantern festival'. It's called the Manto Mitama Festival, happens once a year and is for 'the enshrined deity of Hisroshima Gokoku Shrine', a guardian of peace...

Even though I saw with my own eyes but didn't count, they hang about 2000 lanterns around the place...

From 7pm, 100 shrine maidens end up performing a traditional marriage dance and afterwards a kagura performance which is a ceremonial Shinto dance. The problem is, as I read all this information from a Japan travel website, I found that I couldn't really relate what I had seen with the names of the dances.

And yes, had I planned this post better and actually done the research before I started writing, this wouldn't seem like a thought journal, but now I've found a better website, and if I paraphrase...

The maidens are all unmarried and under 30 years old and take part having answered a call for dancers on the shrine website. They come from local and far away places and end up performing three dances. They practice once for 3 hours before the event and so it makes me feel less bad that, it kind of showed, however the dances seems to be a combo of 6 arms and leg moves followed by 3-4 steps forward as they move around the courtyard. It offers plenty of opportunity to re-learn the moves for each song. They did the best they could with the amount of prep they were afforded. The better website.

After the selection of dances we decided to retire for some snacks and then walk back to the hotel, but the festival kept going until late. Here are some photos and a short not-short video!

I also made a very mobile phone friendly video as a sort of summary from this day spent on Miyajima Island and the Manto Mitama Festival.