Two teams face off outside Hachiman Himure Shrine

Sagicho Fire Festival, one of the three most dangerous festivals in Japan. 13 Districts in Omi-Hachiman participate in their annual event, spending months building their huge, heavy floats and then, over one weekend, parade them, bludgeon other teams with them, and, finally, destroy them.

Sagicho Festival was also the event that brought three keen amateur travel journalists together to make our first travel documentary. We interviewed a local underdog team, District 10, and got unwisely close to the massive moving floats, and slightly singed on the night of the festival.

Working on this project has been an amazing learning experience. Learning how our different styles work together, how to use the editing software, (learning not to hate the editing software), mixing audio and finally getting it all to hang together. It’s worth it though. It’s ridiculous how good it feels to look at a completed product and think: We made that. Look! Our names are in the credits!

I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it – and that maybe in years to come you too will come visit the adrenalin packed weekend that is Sagicho Matsuri.

If you want to be even more awesome than you already are, maybe share it with your discerning friends, visit our Facebook page: Where Next Japan, send tweets to us @Wherenextjapan (#wherenextjapan) or leave a comment here – we would LOVE to here from you.