The creature is called Kida, though everyone in Yatsushiro calls it Game: a turtle and a snake fused into one bounding, head-swinging beast, carried at a run by dozens of men. Legend says it ferried the Myoken deity across the sea from China more than a millennium ago, and every November 23rd it re-enacts the landing with alarming enthusiasm, charging the crowds along the procession route of this old castle town in southern Kumamoto. Around it moves a parade of some 1,700 people: nine towering kasaboko floats, sacred horses, and decorated horses galloped along the riverbank at Tosaki, hooves throwing gravel while spectators press close. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed the festival among Japan's great float processions; in all of Kyushu, only Hakata's Gion Yamakasa shares the honor. The night before is Goya, when the floats line the shopping arcade under lanterns and the town inspects its treasures at walking pace. The festival, four centuries old in its present form, is really a welcome party that never stopped being held: a god who arrived by sea, greeted each year as if the boat had just come in.