Festival float - before and after

The Kawagoe Festival is on this weekend. Each year on the Friday, the day before the festival weekend, I love to walk around Kawagoe. There is a real buzz in the old town. And its amazing the things you can see. For example, I usually get to see a festival float or two. Sometimes, when I'm really lucky, I get to see them working on the festival floats. Like today.

There are 29 festival floats from 27 districts in Kawagoe. This one is the float of "Otemachi". Here it is before:

And this is what it will look like tomorrow!↴

I need to get a better photo of the after, but I'm sure you get the gist. This photo is from 2006! I have been to the festival dozens of times over the years. And have taken thousands of photos. But yet this is the only one I have of the Otemachi  "uzume" festival float! The float is called "Uzume" 鈿女 (and that's whats written on the lanterns) for the Goddess on the top, "Ameno Uzume no Mikoto". 

Have you been to the Kawagoe festival before? If not, I can't recommend it strongly enough! Its one of the highlights of autumn not just in Kawagoe, but Saitama and beyond. It is widely renowned as one of the biggest and best Autumn festivals in Japan.