Last week Momo wanted to meet up with a friend of hers, and go to a local festival just down the road. So we did! We met up a bit before noon on Sunday. I didn’t do much planning, we just knew there was a festival and met up at a park nearby. It turns out it was the 33rd Shinagawa Shukuba Festival.

This area is generally considered the first stop on the road from Tokyo (old Edo) to Kyoto, and people would often stop in Shinagawa to stay the night since most people are walking and this is a good distance from Nihonbashi. As a side note, I really like walking on the Old Toukaidou, there are some older shops, and it’s generally a pleasant road.

We met up with Momo’s friend, and got some lunch at the park, where there were a bunch of food trucks. Pretty nice. Then the kids started walking around the festival. They did some super ball scooping, and spent some time at a candy store.

There was a parade that included a marching band from the nearby Shinagawa Women’s School, the Japanese Self Defense Force, a group that does Kimono fitting for wheelchair users, people dressed up in period appropriate clothes, and other stuff. It was fun!

Kimono a very difficult to wear properly, and there are associations that teach people how to wear them. The parade had a group that does Kimono fitting for people in wheelchairs, which must be even more difficult.

We met up by chance with another friend of Momo’s from her day care (two years ago now!!) and they all got sno cones, a festival favorite.

We spent a couple of hours walking up and down the festival route, finding things. The kids wanted to keep playing, so we went to a local park and they played for a while. Us tired dads and mom sat down for a while.

It was a fun, if tiring, way to spend a Sunday afternoon.