Chagu-chagu

The chagu-chagu horse parade is one of Iwate`s more famous festivals - I have no idea why. In theory it sounds really impressive - get about 50 horses, dress them up in traditional stuff, stick a small child in equally interesting clothing on top of it, and walk for about 3 hours. In reality, it is just a big line of horses with small kids on them. I have no idea how we thought we were going to fill an entire Saturday afternoon with this activity. So naive. But try we did. We met for breakfast and in our usual style spent the first 2 hours of our time in a coffee shop. We then watched the horses for 5 minutes, took some photographs, realised they all looked the same, and went for lunch. To be fair, if it had been a nice day we probably could have spent longer watching, but sitting on a riverbank in the drizzle isn`t really so fun.