Kanayama spring festival in Gero-shi

Osamu's coworker told us there was a spring festival in his town. So we went for a drive to see it in kanayama-cho, Gero city. Gero city is famous for its hot springs, though we've never tried them. It's a 80-minute drive from Inuyama but we hardly find traffic lights and convenience stores using a side road. I was surprised to see a wooden house with a steep rafter roof at Kanayama-cho. The house may be moved from the north of Gifu Prefecture and reconstructed there.

We may have arrived there too early, but  there were few tourists. Strolled in the town,  we saw a hana-mikoshi, a portable shrine with pink decoration like pink flowers from a distance. The people who carried the hana-mikoshi moved so fast that I had to run to take pictures. Some local people followed the mikoshi.  Walking around the street  again, a boy looked at me curiously becouse I was a stranger, but when I smiled at him he smiled back. 

The shrine in Kanayama was very wondeful one, but there was nobody there. I saw another mikoshi group of this festival were coming.  Young girls were leading and young boys carried mikoshi, children carried Totoro's mikoshi and only we watched them. This festival hadn't reached its climax and we may have missed it, but we enjoyed the festival very much and left for home.