The first one was tanabata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata) which has quite a romantic story to it, but like most festivals in the world, is just another (legitimate) excuse for fireworks and a piss-up. In order to bond with my local community I volunteered to help out and was placed at the goldfish-catching game. Kids have to try and catch real goldfish swimming around in a basin, but with nets made of paper, so it's really kinda hard. Everyone who gave it a try though got a goldfish as a present. I felt really sorry for the poor fishes, but it was quite an interesting experience:
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| My supervisor: "You'll be surprised to find out how many people actually live here!" Indeed... |
The firework happened at the end of the festival. It was very impressive except for the fact that it was commented by a guy with a microphone who was telling everybody exactly what it was they were seeing; like subtitles for the seeing impaired. If he ran out of stuff to say he'd just make sounds of wonder and astonishment, but never would he shut up.
The day after we accidentally ran into a rather secular festival in the neighbouring town of Kutchan. It was dedicated to potatoes, but actually we couldn't find anything related to potatoes, except for potato-shaped pancakes:
The week after it was was time for Bon Odori in our area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Festival) for which I and pretty much every other foreigner in town were put in a summer kimono (yukata) and had to dance around a fire:
The dance was kinda hard to learn, so for the next festival I was volunteered for, I actually got to practice quite a bit. I went to the dance practice of the women's industrial association and found out that it was our job to go round town in a festival bus and perform our dances all over. It was my town's shrine festival, for which an omikoshi (basically a taxi in which the god or kami residing in the shrine is put for a day out) was carried around town and me and my group had to dance after it.
Unfortunately it was raining so I was freezing my oshiri off in my yukata, but we got lots of free food and ever since that day everybody in town knows me for real. "Ohohoho, that was some nice dancing the other day" - great first impression, eh?
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| The omikoshi is carried back into the shrine. By this time it wasn't raining anymore |
The other two festivals I went to I just spent eating various stuff and looking round while other people had to do the work. Both of them were shrine festivals like my one, but it wasn't raining so there was actually somebody there. The first one was in Rankoshi (a neighbouring town) and had really impressive dancing. Of course I met half of my town there as well...
The second one took place in Ginzan, which is part of the same sub-prefecture but kinda far enough away for me not to meet anyone I knew. Some of my ALT friends met many of their students there though. It's a bit like in the countryside where I grew up and young people really have so little choice of stuff to do in their spare time, they go to every village festival in the area that manifests itself (like I do now basically).
The Ginzan village festival was kinda new for me in that it had Sumo, which is often part of festivals. They just set up a ring in front of the shrine. But instead of fat naked guys in thongs like I would have hoped, they had little kids wrestle each other. It was fierce, but I am not going to post pictures of the bloodshed, just the regular festival which took place by the village shrine in a cosy sandpit just under an idyllic forest:
And this is probably it for summer festivals as it is getting really cold. I have to work at an autumn festival of sorts though on Sunday, so I'll see how that goes...
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