Jidai Matsuri (Festival of the Ages)

Last Sunday my parents and I went to Kyoto to see Jidai Matsuri(Festival of the Ages), one of Kyoto's three biggest traditional festivals which is held annually on October 22nd.  It was my first time to go to see the festival, despite living in the same Kansai area for over 20 years. This festival consists of a large parade from  Kyoto Imperial Palace and Heian shrine, and the participants of the parade are dressed in accurate costumes representing various periods and characters in Japanese federal history.There are approximately more than 2,000 performers and it takes two hours to watch the entire procession pass by.
We left home quite early in the morning trying to get a good seat to watch the parade and we got to the old imperial palace more than 1 hour before the parade, but there were already hundreds of people waiting for it.

At 12 p.m., the costume procession began from the main gate of the old imperial palace, with a lot of performers dressed in historical costumes from almost every period from Heian Period to Meiji Period. In the procession there were many historically famous samurai and military figures, which was quite interesting to me who specialized in Japanese history in high school.

 Here are the photos taken with my new camera (Click each photo for a larger version)
Sorry I took too many so I couldn't put up all of them. Enjoy! >>