We then took another Sakura train (a rebranded shinkansen), and go to Osaka as quickly as with a Nozomi:
but catching pokemon from that fast a train, was not possible :)
We then checked in our hotel and went to the Tejin Festival by Tenmangu Shrine, just next door to our hotel. There were multiple mikoshi (portable shrines) carried by hand by a lot of strong men, and they were mixed amongst other parades with colorful costumes:
Tenmangu Shrine was a bit packed
Parade highlights:
After the parade had gone by us, we went to walk to the river where the parade would end up and start boarding boats. They each loaded their mikoshi, portable shrines:
it's kind of cheating if they use a crane now :)
Boat loading highlights:
Up to then, everything had been great, there were that many people being that it was monday afternoon, so I put my guard down and we didn't leave early enough or walk quickly enough towards a good viewing point for the boats going by and the fireworks. By the time we got there, the bridge I was aiming for was totally packed with people and it didn't look like we'd be able to get on it (although maybe we could have), and sadly I chose to try to get to the shore in places where the police nicely closed off all access. The next hour was a clusterfuck of us trying to get to a point that wasn't closed off and from where we could see the fireworks. Eventually after walking way too long and high pace, we got on the other side of the river at a place where we could finally access the river. The viewing wasn't great, but it was viewing at least, so we caught the last 30mn of the fireworks:
we walked by Tenmangu
this very nice bridge was entirely closed off :(
A few fireworks bits:
From there, we walked to the nearest train station that got us back to our hotel pretty quickly (thankfully we didn't have to do the long walk in reverse, and getting/using a cab would have been hopeless):
