Daimonji, but... Not. Instead, Obon Dancing!

The Daimonji... thing... was today [actually, a few days ago, but it took me three days to remember to get the pictures off my camera]. It's not really a festival, but there are these big shapes carved out of the hills around Kyoto, and there are torches in these that are lit up once a year for Daimonji, which means, literally, "big gate letters". They shapes are three letters ("big", "law", and "big" again) and two shapes (a boat and something else) if memory serves. Plus or minus a shape.
Anyway, I misunderstood my group's plan for the night, and ended up not getting a single picture of the letters you can read from any high place within 10 miles.

We ran into this group of girls at right while on the way to our destination, and when you've got a group of high school girls wearing yukata willing to pose for you, how can you not take a picture?

However, I did see a bunch of Obon dancing instead. It just lasted a lot longer than we had planned, which killed our chance to see the letters. No biggies, since the Obon was pretty neat.

You can see Ana at left and some unnamed little girl at right, both doing Obon. Can't do video, though, so that's what you get. Below and right is Sou Jong Obon-ing.
You can also see most of a family that came and allowed me to take their picture. There's a mom off to the left that you can't see, as well as a grandmother. They didn't want to be in the shot.

Obon is a kind of dance that anybody from the town can participate in, and there's a taiko (for those that don't know, just read taiko here as "a big, powerful drum" and you'll be okay) drummer and a singer guy, though I don't think he was singing words.
So you get a bunch of concentric circles around the platform the drummer and singer/announcer are in/on, and everyone does this dance. I'm not entirely certain, but I think you're supposed to slowly move inward, which signifies your progression as a Buddhist entity... or something? I didn't do the dance itself, obviously, but it looked pretty simple. Two or three steps, clap, half a spin, clap, reverse, double clap. Or something along those lines. I'm not certain it's that complex, or even that everybody was doing the same one.

Some of my friends from school were there, as you can see. And I also got them all to pose together with Ana. These girls don't really like me, but they seem to put up with me when necessary. They're all pretty nice, in any case.
From the left is Antonia, Alessandra, Sou Jong, Selena, and Ana (who doesn't go to my school). Ana is a master's student working on her engineering degree at Kyoto University.

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that a little bit of post-processing can do good things for a picture, even in my hands. Or at least, I think so.

Which of these two pictures do you like better?