While staying in a share house in Shibuya, Tokyo, I heard chanting and whistling in the distance in the direction of the famous Shibuya Crossing. This piqued my interest, so I walked to check out the sounds. When the small street that I lived on opened up into the crowded road that was a few hundred meters from the crossing, the streets were closed to traffic and were filled with people. Looking across the crowd, I could see what looked like large, ornate golden structures or sculptures bobbing up and down. There was rhythmic chanting and large lines of drummers, with people clapping in time.

As I made my way through the sea of people and neared one of the moving shrines, I could see that it was being carried on the shoulders of a group of people in matching outfits made of patterned cotton. They were moving as a group, swaying the mikoshi from side to side as they slowly moved through the crowd.

I explored the rest of the festival and ate some street food before making my way back to the share house with some of my friends that I met up with at the festival a few hours later. We talked about how cool it would be to help carry the mikoshi, and later that night I added it to my list.

Luckily enough, I got an email from the company that I was renting my room from two days later, looking for people to help carry a mikoshi in a matsuri. I replied almost immediately and got the details for where to meet before the festival.

A few days later, I showed up and was given clothes that were too small (which is understandable given my size and the size of the average Japanese man). A few other foreigners from the share house company and I met up with the rest of the people who would be carrying the mikoshi. After a quick drink of sake, we took our positions, lifted the mikoshi onto our shoulders, and started walking. It was much heavier than I expected and very tiring; luckily, there were enough people participating that once you got tired, you could get someone to tag in for you. I was very happy for that—if not, I don't think I would have made it to the end.

After the day of dancing, cheering, and holding the heavy shrine on my shoulder, our group went to a different festival at a shrine where there were local dance performances, music, and food. My shoulder was killing me and badly bruised (photo in the gallery below), but it was worth every second.

This was probably the shortest time between adding something to my bucket list and being able to cross it off.