The girl in her grandfather's arms seemed to have grown tired of the festivities

The Shinto shrine that I came to on this day was located on the way from JR Hamamatsucho station to Zojo-ji Temple. It is the Shiba Daijingu Shrine. The reason I came to the shrine, which I would normally pass by, was because it was the site of the Dara-Dara-Matsuri (Lazily) festival. Although the shrine is so called because the festival goes on and on, there was no sense of idleness when I walked around the narrow shrine grounds. It is a normal festival where people spend their time leisurely. What attracted my interest more was the portable shrine procession.

The approach to the Shiba Daijingu Shrine, which is located in the heart of the city, is very short, and the portable shrines depart from the bottom of the stairs in front of the shrine building and proceed with a vigorous shout, soon running into the busy Daiichi Keihin Road. The Shiba Daijingu is a shrine with a long history. Because it is an annual festival of the shrine, even if it is on Daiichi Keihin, where there is a lot of traffic, it is a big mistake to think that the festival is prioritised and traffic regulations are enforced. The portable shrines are loaded onto trucks at the end edge of Daiichi Keihin, and from there onwards they are left on the trucks as they make their rounds. It was a bit surreal to see the portable shrines on the back of the truck riding through the town alone, without any shrine parishioners around, as if it were a festival organised by an AI after the demise of mankind.

I wondered if the trucks were cruising because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it seems that at the Dara-Dara-Matsuri Festival, the portable shrines were mounted on trucks even before the COVID-19 pandemic. The traffic in the area is so heavy that even the gods may not be able to come and go freely.

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