Two Unique Festivals

Have you ever wanted to go to an exciting festival? Festivals are a way to unite communities and celebrate together. Today, I will show you two unique festivals around the world.

La Tomatina, also known as The Tomato Festival, is a unique festival in Spain. In La Tomanita, men in trucks throw squashed tomatoes at people. The men throw about a million pounds of tomatoes every summer. La Tomatina started in 1945 when some people started a tomato food fight to cool down in the summer. 12 years later, La Tomanita got banned for religious reasons, but it soon got unbanned when millions of people protested. La Tomatina also has a lot of rules that are mostly for safety reasons like squashing tomatoes before you throw them at others. I used to think La Tomanita was only in Spain, but I was wrong. La Tomatina is now a global festival that a lot of countries like Korea celebrate it.

For 500 years, Japan has commemorated its ancestors during the Obon Festival. Obon is a day where Japanese people reunite at their family’s graves and make offerings at temples and shrines. Communities gather around lakes, rivers, and where water is to float paper lanterns to guide their ancestors back to the spirit world. Obon takes around 3 days in August, but it’s predicted that it used to take longer. When I saw the Obon festival, I realized that it looked similar to the lantern protests, but I kind of think Obon is cooler.

I really don’t like parades and festivals because I find them to be boring, but when I learned about these two festivals I became more interested in festivals. The tomato festival is the most unique festival in the world. I think the Obon is a festival filled with politeness. The two festivals make me want to go to these countries more.