The New Year's parade of fire fighters of Bibai City

By Kazu
Every year, every municipality shows the diligence and reliability of its firefighters.  
On Jan.7(Sat.), the fire department.of Bibai City did its annual ritual, inviting local top brasses.

 Female firefighters played  showed their performance with Japanese traditional drums.

 Some of the firefighters showed their acrobatic ladder performance which is the climax attraction of this annual ceremony. 

 The scaling ladder is fixed by the colleagues of the protagonists with the hooks that was used for fire fighting in Edo era.  
 The protagonists of this performance say " Yo!" everytime they strike the good and acrobatic balance on top or side of the ladder and the audience gives applause to praise their performance.

 It is much colder in January in Hokkaido than other part of Japan but the fire fighters wear the same kind of traditional uniform for fire fighters and show the same kind of traditional performances with bare hands. Microfiber underwears are not verboten for this performance, I think. 
The fire department of each municipality has budgetary difficulity and recognize the necessity to merge each other for effective and efficient performance of their real duty.  But there are a tons of matters to discuss and reach the consensus among the pertinent municipalities