Women take selfies as they wait for the subway at Penn Station, New York, December 26, 2023. (Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP Photo)

A starling jealously guards a seed station in the back garden of the photographer’s Michigan home in January 2024. (Photo by Lisa Cavanary/Solent News)

American actress Elle Fanning arrives for the 77th Tony Awards at Lincoln Center in New York on June 16, 2024. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Sunrise in the New Forest near Lyndhurst in Hampshire, UK this morning, August 15, 2024. (Photo by Cenk Albayrak-Touye/Picture Exclusive)

Revellers light firecrackers during Diwali, a Hindu festival of lights, in New Delhi on November 12, 2023. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain/AFP Photo)

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Soma-Nomaoi is a festival that recreates a battle scene from more than 1,000 years ago. It is annually held for 4 days from July 22 to 25 in Haramachi City, Fukushima Prefecture, in the eastern part of Japan. In this historical event, 600 mounted samurai in traditional Japanese armor, with long swords at their side and ancestral flagstaffs streaming from their backs, ride across open fields. Soma-Nomaoi has been designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.

Photo: A young woman (C) clad in samurai costume leads other local poeple as she rides her horse during a parade at the annual Soma Nomaoi festival in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, on July 28, 2012. The traditional full-scale festival kicked off for the first time after the accident of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant following the massive earthquake and the tsunami on March 11, 2011. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka/AFP Photo)