25 September 2009 Daycare Summer Festival Video
I’ve been meaning to share this video for a long time now, but only recently has my computer miraculously become able to edit video without freezing. This is some dancing from the summer festival at our daycare, described here. In this video the kids are carrying around o-mikoshi, which are little portable houses for the gods or spirits (kind of like the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie). About halfway through the video switches to them dancing around the little arks.
I’m not sure to what extent this whole Shinto-inspired ritual is dependent on the fact that our daycare is part of a huge Shinto shrine. There may be some non-Shinto-affiliated daycares that do this at their own festivals, but probably not so elaborately.