This year, FINAL FANTASY XIV joined the Aomori Nebuta Festival that took place until August 7. This festival is one of the larger festivals held in Japan. In this festival, "nebuta" (a float designed to look like a famous historical figure or mythological character) are carried through the city by dancers called the "haneto" (which also refers to their clothing), which is all accompanied by music.

Here you can see a larger nebuta that was carried by Aomori Yamada School. They were also the ones that carried our FFXIV nebutas in front of this larger one.

Once the evening hours hit, more nebutas were brought out from the storage area to prepare for the festivities! FFXIV nebutas, roll out!

On the streets, attendees received Namazu fans! I want one!

As the night falls, the nebutas light up the city with their lights. They look beautiful!

Here we can see the students from the Yamada School that carried our chocobo nebuta. The size of our nebuta was a bit larger than a standard nebuta, so I'm sure they had a bit of a harder time pulling it. But they were smiling all the way!

Our nebuta was created by sixth generation master nebuta craftsman, Takashi Kitamura! There's only two master nebuta craftsman in Japan, and only six in history. We're honored to have our nebuta crafted by such a master.

Here we can see the group of haneto participating in the festival.

If you ever visit Japan during this event, you can rent these haneto outfits and participate in the festivities for free. There isn't any registration, and anyone can join! How cool is that!?

Here's a picture of Yoshida and crew dressed in their haneto glamour.

As you can see, the festival was wild! (We're not making excuses for the blurry images, I promise!)

Warriors of Light from various parts of Japan have attended the festival, and we were happy to see them!

That is it for this year's Aomori Nebuta Festival. If you did happen to visit, we hope you were able to check out our awesome chocobo and moogle nebutas!

- Zhexos
Community Team