Crossword-Solution: MATSURI 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Palm’s Tandem—A Noisy _Matsuri_—A Jolting Journey—The Mountain Villages—Winter Dismalness—An Out-of-the-world Hamlet—Crowded Dwellings—Riding a Cow—“Drunk and Disorderly”—An Enforced Rest—Local Discouragements—Heavy Loads—Absence of Beggary—Slow Travelling LETTER XVIII.

Hundreds of men, women, and children passed to and fro through the gateway in incessant streams, and so they are passing through every daylight hour of every day in the year, thousands becoming tens of thousands on the great _matsuri_ days, when the _mikoshi_, or sacred car, containing certain symbols of the god, is exhibited, and after sacred mimes and dances have been performed, is carried in a magnificent, antique procession to the shore and back again.

Palm’s Tandem—A Noisy _Matsuri_—A Jolting Journey—The Mountain Villages—Winter Dismalness—An Out-of-the-world Hamlet—Crowded Dwellings—Riding a Cow—“Drunk and Disorderly”—An Enforced Rest—Local Discouragements—Heavy Loads—Absence of Beggary—Slow Travelling.

The _cultus_ of children was in full force, all sorts of masks, dolls, sugar figures, toys, and sweetmeats were exposed for sale on mats on the ground, and found their way into the hands and sleeves of the children, for no Japanese parent would ever attend a _matsuri_ without making an offering to his child.

This _matsuri_, which, like an English fair, feast, or revel, has lost its original religious significance, goes on for three days and nights, and this was its third and greatest day.