Kichijoji festival/Dancing with Strangers

Today was a festival. I don't know exactly what it was. But what it was, was those robes everybody was wearing, those thin blue cloaks with some kanji printed on the back like a team name. Like everyone had the same last name. It was all those hundreds of people with the cloaks lifting the same big gold throne on their shoulders and yelling and choppily walking, dancing down the street together, and somewhere else there were taiko drums, I felt it on my skin. That vision of their arms… Those flailing arms! Banging those two thick sticks on the center drum, making it loud! The flute, the chime, the simple hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit behind it. So consistent. It was beautiful. I’m in the back row, watching the arms of men flail like crazy making sounds of tension, taking turns keeping the drum going, I am smiling like crazy and drinking my can of beer I have bought. It was those same people, in the cloaks, smashing sticks into drums, that are wearing small pants. If they were men, they might have been wearing no pants at all, just one thick, white rope. Babies were wearing this white rope, blowing whistles, running around, others chased them with smiles. Above us, lots and lots of those red paper lights hung on wires along both sides of our narrow streets. The exciting streets. We get another beer. More beer. The police eye us, us sitting, us speaking, us sipping, eating a small sandwich at night when the festival has wound down.
At the park in Kichijoji, we are drunk. We are thinking in our heads of cuddling with each other somewhere but know there's nowhere. We’re sitting, facing the water. Behind us, that guy is still playing guitar and singing. We want to dance! There is a Japanese girl dancing there alone! We get up and act silly in front of the music player. His voice is so hard and broken and so persistent. Like someone always driving their car with one tire missing. It is unbelievably silly. We are (some of us) not so drunk. More drunk Japanese strangers join! We’re dancing around, laughing at everything. Everything is funny. The music is funny. The dancing is funny. The people are silly. We are silly. We speak some Japanese. They speak some English. They tease us. They want our girls. But they won't. It is so nice.