After you get out of the Nakasu-Kawabata Station or the JR Hakata Station on the Kuko (Airport) Line on the Fukuoka City Subway a five minutes’ walk will lead your way to the Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival, on the condition that you arrive at Kushida-jinja Shrine just at the right time of the year, from July 1st to July 15th. This festival is held at Kami-Kawabata-cho, Hakata-ku, and Fukuoka City. The most exciting part of this great ceremony in summer is a view that hundreds of Japanese men have nearly one ton of floats on their shoulders.

This a wrenching heart spectacle to see nearly one million people concentrate all their energy and spirit on the yamakasa, which are great grand floats carefully decorated by the local people for this ceremony. This parade is different from other parade for all the anticipators in the parade will racing at a full speed, and running through the roads of the city at a full speed. The floats used in this festival can be divided into two different groups according to their different usages. One is called kazariyama. This kind of floats is for the usage of decoration. Another one is named kakiyama, which is carried by men in the festival parade.
On the first day, all the kazariyama will be put on the show. While you are wandering on the street, you can witness the delicacy of them. The height of them is ten meters. And the skillful craftsmen will picture it with samurai or popular anime character. Long ago people in Japan will also carry those floats when they are marching through the streets. However they often got stuck by the cable in the city. So the people decided to only use them as a kind of exhibition. At you can enjoy them all the year round in the Kushida-jinja Shrine.

You can see the people marching through the streets from 10th to the 15th within the festival, with floats on their shoulders. This event will start at 4:59 of thy if you want to the last day. So you have to get up quite early if you want to join them. Along with the floats, drum show will also attract your attention. This is a competition between men carrying the floats running along the five kilometers course in less than thirty minutes.

The interesting part of the festival is that the resident of Hakata will not eat cucumber, representing the deity called Gion-sama, during the festival.