Ennichisai 2013 @ Blok M

Ennichisai is a traditional Japanese festival that has been running for four years in a row, in Blok M otherwise known as the Little Tokyo of Jakarta. I read about it from last year, wanted to go but then missed it completely. So I told myself that I shan't miss it this year.

Since we have been exploring Blok M quite a bit for the past few months, we sorta guess roughly where it will be held and were kinda confident to drive ourselves there. Traffic was heavy getting there, so to save time, Hubs decided to valet the car and we walked out to the streets where festival was. And when we down to the street level, the festival is PACKED! Both of us didn't realised how popular it is.

As we walked along the streets, there's a carnival atmosphere in the air. Booths lined up on both side of street, selling all sort of Japanese street foods, merchandise and games to attract the crowd. At the same time, we also saw Indonesians dressed up in cosplay to join in the fun. 

We decided to grab lunch at our favourite Boci Boci before walking the streets again. As we made our way back to our car, we noticed that some folks were getting ready for the Mikoshi parade. There were three Japanese shrines that paraded the street that afternoon:

The smallest for children...

Mid size for women that had a woman standing on the shrine, chanting and dancing the the rhythm of the drums

And the largest shrine housed on a carriage pulled a group of male volunteers. This shrine also had children providing the drum beats which the entire parada marched to.

The Ennichisai festival ran from noon till night over a period of two days, which ended last night. There were fireworks as well on the concluding night, which we had vantage point to view the display from the comfort of our home.