There is a Shinto shrine in Hachinohe in northeastern Japan called the Ogami jinja. The shrine’s god is said to protect castles. In 1721, there was an especially good harvest. In order to thank the god for the good harvest, a local lord took it to visit another god locatd at his acncestors’ shrine nearby (Shinra jinja).
The god was carried in a gorgeous portable shrine and the people held a 3-day festival. That parade and the festival are the origins of what was eventually to become one of Tohoku’s most beautiful festivals, the Sansha Taisai.
In 1824, to make the parade more spectacular a Nambu Clan commander ordered his warriors to take part. He also asked a group of Tiger Dancers from a neighbouring village to join the parade. Later, a third shrine called Sinmeigu joined. With the addition of the third shrine the festival was named the Three Shrines Festival (Sansha Taiasai Matsuri).
The floats are the main attraction of the festival. The people and local businesses in each neighbourhood work together each year to build them (they are re-built every year), using Japanese rice paper, bamboo, polystyrene and wire. The scenes depicted on them are based on mythology, local legends, fairy tales, Kabuki plays, etc. Every year a new story or play is chosen as the main theme and new, different floats are created.
The floats are usually 10-11.5 metres long and 4-5 metres high as well as wide. The top section raises and the sides fold out, allowing them to be raised to 9 metres in height (used to be 15 metres, but that was considered dangerous).
myjapantravels 
Some of the artwork on these floats is incredible!! Are you travelling alone?
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Always on my own, mate, but I feel it much more in nortern Japan than I did in western Japan – people here are not exactly unfriendly, but they are not very warm or chatty, unlike in Kyushu…
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