Edinbara no Matsuri

When you live in Edinburgh people talk about the festival from quite early on in the year - not a lot, but it comes up a fair amount. Having lived a lot of my life 50 miles away you could get away with thinking the largest arts festival in the world doesn't exist. When you get closer and closer to summer here though, the tourists are the first give away - Edinburgh gets Glasgow's quota in January alone. On Wednesday we had our regular, alcohol aided Japanese conversation group just at the back of work, overlooking a 15 metre high, inflatable purple cow (a venue) where guys in laderhosen and a woman on stilts hidden by a bulbous 17th century style dress gave out flyers. I passed a man dressed as an elephant, walking as if going to work in an office this morning. African dancers took over a traffic island on George IV bridge. The streets are bursting. Scottish accents have to be searched for. A lot of chaos, a lot of smiles.

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