This morning, at around 10:00 am, we had a bunch of guys in happi jackets and white pants that looked like they were nicked from cricketers, parading past our apartment here in Okusawa as they chanted and huffed and puffed like a troupe of big, bad wolves.
Over their shoulders they were lugging a long, twisted up thing that resembled a snake with a cute mush, and my wife calmly advised that it was the beginning of today's festival for Okusawa Shrine.
This is what it’s really all about in Tokyo.
About five minutes' walk away, nestled amidst an array of beautiful old trees, Okusawa Jinjya is a traditional Shinto shrine that’s obviously not only venerated by the local population, but beloved as well, if the queue right around the corner and down the road last January 1 was any indication; then again, that's typical at shrines during the wintry New Year period.
At other times at Okusawa Shrine you’re just as likely to encounter elderly women in kimono playing koto instruments to nobody in particular, or children in spectacular traditional costumes celebrating their birthdays.
But Okusawa shrine is famed for that aforementioned 150kg, nine-metre-long daija, or shrine snake, draped over the torii gate at the entrance, which is often mistakenly referred to as a dragon – probably by fellow ophidiophobics like myself.
This lovable-faced dragon ring-in has actually been decreed an official local “intangible folklore cultural asset”, and dates back to a legend from the early Edo period which has it that when a plague assailed Okusawa, the god Hachiman advised the village head – via a dream - to walk round the village carrying a python constructed of dry rice straw, in order to set about recovery from the epidemic.
These days, a new snake is made (of twisted rice straw) by volunteers each year, in early September, and paraded around the shrine at the insanely popular Yakuyoke no Daiji Festival the same month – which is what we just experienced the beginnings of this morning.