If you are in Tokyo today you could do worse than to visit the Nakamurabashi Awaodori festival in Nerima Ward. The main event is tonight! I visited the warm up yesterday and I have never seen so many kids in Tokyo in my life. The average age of the people visiting must have been eight or nine. The main main parade takes place along the local shopping street, moving under the train tracks and onto the stage area in front of the station and then to the last bit of the shopping street.

Yesterday there were only a handful of teams taking part in the parade and they were all local Nerima teams. Perhaps the most famous of the Nerima based teams is the Daikonren (だいこん連), after the local vegetable speciality, the daikon, which are said to be especially delicious grown around here. These days though, Nerima ward being almost…