Dragon Festival in Japan!

This was my favorite experience so far this summer!! I really didn't know what to expect, but then was blown away with the Japanese Summer Matsuri experience. The men, women and kids who performed in this festival are so cool and so strong!! The dragons are really heavy!!

Here's a write-up of the full legend of the Dragon Saburo provided by "MyJapanTravels by campervan:"

Once upon a time, there were three brothers Taro Kika, Jiro and Saburo. Since Saburo was a honest, very courageous and dependable young man, he took over the ancestral home, where he happily lived with a beautiful princess.

However, his brothers envied him, and hatched a plot to to get rid of Saburo and steal the princess away.

So, one day, the brothers took Saburo out to Tateshina with orders to pick up some valuable treasure hidden in a deep hole in the ground. Honest Saburo quickly entered the hole without knowing that his brothers were lying. As he was descending, his brothers suddenly cut the wisteria rope he was using, and thus Saburo fell to the bottom of the abyss.

Stumbling in the darkness, Saburo arrived at a beautiful strange village. The villagers were awed at the sight of him and quickly welcomed him as their leader. However, Sabu would often remember the world outside and quietely weep. His new wife, seeing him shed such tears, told him to forget the village underground and return to his world. To help him on his journey back home, she prepared nine onigiri (rice balls).

Thus armed, he began his steep and painful journey back to the world above. Just as he finished eating the last of his nine rice balls, he suddenly spotted light far in the distance

And so it was that Saburo finally emerged from out of the Onuma pond at the temple located at the foot of the Mountain.

There were a group of children playing happily around the pond, and on seeing them, Saburo cried out in with joy. But the children ran away, screaming, “A dragon has come out of the pond! It’s a dragon! It looks scary.”

Surprised, Saburo looked at his reflection in the water of the pond and saw that indeed, he had become a terrifying dragon. Saburo’s grief was so intense that it caused black clouds to gather in the skies and a terrible storm to be unleashed.

Then, as the far west sky became bright, the voice of the princess could be heard calling out to her beloved Saburo from the distance. “Saburo-san, Saburo-san”.

For, after searching for Saburo when he had disappeared, the princess had submerged into Lake Suwa and become a dragon.

Thus, Saburo made his way to Lake Suwa to join his beloved princess, and the two dragons lived happily ever after…