Not Quite What I Was Looking For

For this week's theme of "Japanese Religion", I had planned to stir up something new. Four years ago, I visited the island of Shikoku. There with my host family, one day on our way back from buying fish for dinner at the market, we stumbled upon a colorful sight. A boat was docked in the harbor decorated with massive bamboo sticks, from which hung even more massive flags done up in bright colors. My host family told me I was lucky; they were celebrating the completion of a new fishing boat and blessing it for a good future.



I decided to go back to this topic for tonight's post, but unfortunately, I've hit quite the dead end. All I seem to have are my past memories and prior experience, and hardly any form of history, reason behind the celebration, or native explanation. My searches all turned up empty, and since Neyagawa-shi (my current residence) isn't much of a fishing town, my host mother seems to know even less than I do.

However, here is what I remember.
When we got there, a group of men were playing drums, and more were stationed on the boat, as the first picture shows. Soon the men started throwing Mochi (packed rice) packets at the people standing below, who would catch them eagerly. This is almost like the video we watched in class of the Shinto celebration, where priests threw down packs of beans to people who caught them for good luck in life. Other than the packs of rice, there were blocks of wood being thrown. On each block there was a word; I later found out these were drink "tokens", and you brought them to the table behind you to later "claim your drink". Some included apple juice, orange juice, and beer. The ceremony was quite a sight, but my question still remains: why?


The Kanji on the rice stands for 'Celebration'

Unfortunately this post remains extremely lacking, so a real religion post is to follow. But I didn't want to leave this topic to the dust; I still find it very intriguing, and any other information anyone knows would be of interest to me.