- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 3
-
Sparkle (0)
Festivals are a fun way to introduce your child to live music, but don’t expect to catch many of the adult offerings yourself; little ones don’t sit still very long and they will not stand for hours in huge crowds just to catch a glimpse of Radiohead or some other headliner that you’re dying to see.--Family Travel
At my house, we're getting ready for Folklife. Every year my ukulele club steps on stage at Folklife, a huge - and FREE - Seattle music festival. And we have the Junction Festival, a weekend street fair up in the business district of my neighborhood. Just a few weeks back, we attended our local Cambodian New Year's festival - we've attended Chinese New Year, Bon Odori (a Japanese festival with dancing), the Scottish Highland Games, and, oh, the others are just too many to mention. I love festival season because it's outdoors, because there's music, and because it's a great way to get a hit of culture without going too far from home or exposure to local culture you wouldn't find otherwise while traveling. With just a little searching I found... The Irish Festival of Oulu in, yes, Finland:
Come visit the northern frontier of Irish music and join us for the 3rd annual Irish Festival of Oulu from October 2nd-5th 2008. Organized by The Irish Music Society of Oulu, the festival celebrates the richness of Irish culture including dance, poetry, story telling, Irish Wolfhounds parade, puppeteering, and plenty of world class traditional Irish music.
The Naked Man Festival in Okayama, Japan
The host of this event, is a Shingon sect temple believed to have been founded in the year 778. Eyo is a 14-day New Year ritual during which monks of the Shingon sect pray for a year of bountiful harvest and good fortune. On the 14th day, amulets (an object that protects a person from trouble) said to guarantee a good year were presented to the elders representing the people. But an increasing amount of believers began to gather for these amulets. People fought until their clothes tore off!! Recently, the festival has been attracting over 10,000 naked men who thrust themselves into the crowd upon the release of these wooden charms at midnight. Despite the chilling temperature, the intense fight produces steam that casts a mysterious spell on this winter event.
And the Songkran Festival in Thailand
Traditionally, families and friends gather to celebrate by visiting temples, sprinkling water on Buddha images in reverence, and sprinkling water on each other's hands as an act of respect and wishing good luck. Here in Phuket, shortly after dawn on the 13th, devout Buddhists gather at the neighborhood temples to offer food for the orange robed monks and prayers for the New Year. Buuuut, by mid-morning, the tradition vastly changes and the town degenerrates into a battlefield where every person in sight abandon themselves to a mad free-for-all crazyness of throwing, squirting splashing, heaving, hurling and dumping freezing cold water on each other.
Which festivals are you heading out for this spring and summer? What's your hometown favorite or the one you've attended overseas that left you with the best photos and memories of your travels?
Photo: Gangaur Festival from MystiqueCreation on Flickr.
Pam blogs about travel and other adventures at Nerd's Eye View.
