Moving these omikoshi around is definitively a team effort. It would probably be much easier with about a dozen members but that would be defeating the purpose of this exercise, which is partly to create a group effort to help train the parishioners in pulling together, trusting each other and working as a group rather than a bunch of individuals. It is supposed to be difficult, and getting so many people to pull in one direction is very difficult indeed. The omikoshi took quite some time to finally stop, see-sawing it’s way through the crowd and requiring quite some effort from the leaders of the neighborhood to push it back when it got to close to the final position. At the end, the neighborhood leader will stand on one of the uma, the wooden blocks where the omikoshi is placed to rest, and guide it forward, close enough so that he is able to step up on it and signal the lowering of the omikoshi by clacking to wooden blocks together. It is great fun to see how well coordinated the different omikoshi teams around Tokyo are! The members of this one was very energetic!
