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It's probably near the end of festival season and I know that some geeks like to go to festivals...if not festivals then conventions, whichever, I've not fussy. I know a couple of people mentioned Download, so here's a thread dedicated to the festivals/conventions people have been to this year or will be going to.

Who did you see? What was it like? Having you got any pictures.

This year, I went to Wacken Open Air in Germany, it's about 50 miles South of the Denmark border, and it's the second time I've been to this particular festival and like last time, I absolutely loved it!

It's a metal festival, so there was nothing but metal, though there were a couple of bands emos listen to, but they still counted as metal. So these were the bands I saw

Saxon (Awesome show, yet again)
Motorhead
Heaven and Hell (yes, the one made up of Black Sabbath and Dio. They were amazing)
Nevermore
Hammerfall
JBO (they were funny. They had their own version of 'Raining Blood' by Slayer, which was just 'raining men' with one word changed)
UFO
RAGE (With the lead singer of Blind Guardian as a guest)
Lacuna Coil
Testament
GammaRay
Schandmaul
Endstille
Cathedral
Tristania (got a hug from the singer)
Pain
Korpiklaani (I tried to start a Cossack Pit)
Epica
Suidakra
Borknagar
Reincarnatus
Coheed and Cambria (I didn't want to see them, I think they just need to replace their singer)

Wacken is perhaps the greatest festival I've been to, it was their 20th Aniversary this year and I think about 70,000 people were there this year. The festival is so well organised it's unbelievable, the sound set up is fantastic and it's really relaxing. What I love about Wacken is that it's integrated with the village and some people opened up their back gardens to serve people food, and the food was pretty cheap, I was only spend 2 Euros for breakfast. The supermarket wasn't a long walk away, so I manage to get a crate of 1 litre Coke bottles from there for 10 euros.

One of the reputations of Wacken is that the booze is cheaper than the water, and it's probably not too much of an over exaggeration, in the area a coke would cost 3 euros, mead would cost you 3.5 euros, and a Jaeger-bomb (Jaegermeister + Red Bull) euros. Anybody who goes to festivals will know how expensive drinks are.

On another note, what usually comes up in festival talk is the toilets, because normally festival toilets are disgusting. The guys at wacken put port-o-loos on the campsite and outdoor urinals, but in the Metal-Markt and the arena you could use semi-clean flushable ones. Compared to what we had at Download '06 it's divine.

For the festival DVD you could text your name in to appear in the credits as they were aiming for a world record in having the longest credits on a DVD. A strange record to break, but I think they got enough names.

Though for 2010, it looks like the tickets will sell out fast, the Christmas ticket deal went on sale the day after the festival ended and they sold out with in a day day. It's strange as none of the bands have been announced, but the atmosphere and the environment is fantastic, so the bands aren't the only thing to the festival.

They had a Medieval area where you could buy alsorts of medieval stuff like armour, armour, clothes and they even had some medieval style food and drinks stalls as well as a medieval and fantasy reinactment area and a wrestling ring. Though I didn't see how buying a sword or armour there would have gone down well with customs.

But anyway, here's some photos:

Korpiklaani:

Medieval Bit:

Saxon liked their flames:

Tristania

After a weekend of madness and a day of travelling from Wacken to Lubec, your feet can really appreciate the rain, even if the thunder-storm sucked. Oh...and it's a kilt, not a skirt.




Cheers. Anybody else have any Festivals or Conventions to share from this year?

I went to a different kind of festival, several infact. I typed "Japan festival guide july 2009" into google, pinned them all on the map, and then worked out a route in between the most interesting. My photos are still being sorted out and need resizing, so forgive me for quickly googling for photos by other people...

We landed at Osaka airport, after touring a few days, the first festival was the Nachi Falls Fire Festival, rumoured to be the tallest falls in japan, they're actually only the second highest, but still definately scenic.



A group of monks travel from a temple down through the woods to a shrine at the foot of the falls, carrying 30kg flaming wooden torches, lead by a couple of monks dragging flaming "brooms" which snap off twigs as they run, effectively leaving a trail of fire behind them.



The whole time I was filming this festival, it turned out i was actually just holding a camera in the air, i'd forgotten to hit the record button

From there I went north to Kyoto. The Gion Matsuri festival lasts all through the month, but I stopped just for the main 2 days towards the end. All around the city there's traditional drumming, open theatre shows, obviously lots of food and everyone's in traditional dress. For the 2 days we were there, a procession of giant 2-3 story wagons (with a further 4-5 story high spire) each literally needing an army of men to tow them around the streets.



From here I went via Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see the Solar Eclipse at Kagoshima, natures finest festival ^_^. the weather was a bit pants and I didnt get to see the full totality as I was just a smidgen too far north (saw 97%) but apparently the weather further south was even worse so those under totality just saw a dark sky but no sun or moon.

The next festival (warei taisai) was a bit of a flop, as we were passing through the town during the day, and the main events turned out not to start until that night or the day after, but what I was hoping to see was a load of men racing portable shrines up a river, but what I found instead was a sex-shrine, complete with 6-foot long phallus statue amongst smaller items. The next day was Bull sumo wrestling, which would have been fun to watch, but we had even better plans.

The reason we were in a rush to pass through was because we had to catch the train commencing a 20something hour overnight journey North to the samurai festival. to fellow brits, think of this as the grand national (to non-brits, a grand horse race) but the riders and horses are dressed in traditional samurai attire, with the flags and colours of their clan. Following this they have other events such as displaying a mock battle and traditional dancing.



From here, we spent a few nights in Tokyo, missed the flight home, leaving us stranded for 3 further nights in Osaka, concluding our 21, or rather, 24 day tour of Japan

That sounds quite cool, I'd quite like to visit Japan one day, particularly the traditional parts and watching a festival there I imagine would be cool, after all their cultures and traditions are very much different...though my usernames suggest one of their darker traditions, so I hope you didn't get to see any seppuku or hara-kiri commited there.

Okinawa would probably be at the top of my list.