The"Dontoyaki" festival

The “Dontoyaki” festival was held at the park in front of my house on January 14^th.
This is a traditional festival of the Japanese farmers which is held everywhere in Japan on that day of the year.

We Japanese have a folk belief that gods come to our world in the New Year season. We make a special decoration in front of the entrance to welcome them.
“Dontoyaki” means that we say goodbye to those gods at the end of the New Year season by burning of the ornaments used for the decoration.

I attended it with my son.
People built a tower in center of the park. The tower was made from bamboo and straw. It was about four meters high.
We brought ornaments and pine branches used to decorate the entrance of our house and put them into the tower.

At eleven o’clock, the tower was lit and burned with a very big flame.
It was very hot but we had to stay not so distant from it because it is said that we will have a healthy year when we bath in the smok.

When the flame became smaller, we roasted a rice cake over the flame.
It is believed that eating the rice cake makes us healthy.
The rice cake was ball shaped and was attached at the end of the bamboo pole about three meters long in order to control it from a distant.
Our rice cake turned black because it was very difficult to control. But we ate it with a hope for a good year.
The ball shaped rice cake looks like a silk cocoon.

Many people in my town attended the festival.
During the burning, people made rice cakes and hot sweet sake.
It was a very nice time.