YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — For the first time in five years, airmen volunteers from this airlift hub in western Tokyo will shoulder a mikoshi and take part in an annual Japanese festival in one their host cities.

In Shinto, a religion unique to Japan, a mikoshi is a portable shrine, or palanquin, in which a local deity is carried during local festivals and other events.

“I’m super excited. I know it’s going to be really hard work carrying something essentially the size of a small car, but I’m really looking forward to it,” Staff Sgt. Amanda Tripp, a radio frequencies supervisor for the 374th Communications Squadron, told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday. “The fact that this is the first time in five years, I’m hoping it goes well enough that they invite us all out again next year.”

This year, Yokota’s own mikoshi is returning to the Tanabata festival in Fussa city that starts Friday.

abata, or the Star Festival, celebrates two lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are represented by the stars Vega and Altair and are separated by the Milky Way. They can meet only on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which typically falls in early August.

The festival was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Yokota’s mikoshi was put on display at the base’s passenger terminal, according to a news release Wednesday from the 374th Airlift Wing.

The mikoshi weighs several hundred pounds. The wing said it requires 20 to 25 people to carry and 60 volunteers will take turns shouldering it.

Fussa’s Tanabata festival returned in 2023. Yokota planned to participate last year, but the beams required to carry the mikoshi were misplaced, according to the wing’s release.

Shotaro Takeuchi, a finish carpenter with the 374th Civil Engineer Squadron, led the team that replaced the beams and attached them to the portable shrine.

“I felt a kind of very heavy responsibility,” he told Stars and Stripes on Thursday. “For me to touch the history of Yokota, I was very honored.”

Yokota has a long history of participating and attending festivals in Fussa, one of several municipalities that surround the base. Airmen have been attending the Tanabata festival since 1958 and carrying mikoshis for local groups since 1978.

Yokota’s mikoshi was built in 2000, marking the base’s official involvement in the annual Tanabata festival, according to the wing.

“I like going to the festivals, and I thought it would be really cool to carry one of the mikoshis because of the shrine’s importance,” Tripp said.