Sorry for taking so long to get back to you guys!
I just had a bout of blogging laziness I guess.
Two weekends ago we had the Nagoya Matsuri, which, uh, was basically an excuse for us to go eat, since we didn't really make it to the festival proper. There was a parade and it was hot and it was crowded and we just didn't really feel like it.
But the food was good!!
And we got cool hats! :B
And there was a koala shaped bounce house at the Osu part of the festival!
Remember when I talked about Osu before? It's a big crowded shopping district around the Osu Kannon temple. Part of the festival was there, and part of it (the parade) marched down from Shiyakusho (the city hall) to Yaba-cho (another neighborhood). We caught up with it in Sakae.
At Osu they had festival booths set up, and street performances going on all throughout the shopping district. Particularly they had these oiran processions, processions of these women who were court performers (I think) way back in the day.
My Japanese history is a little fuzzy, sorry.
Here's Osu Kannon temple in the day. It's just plopped right down in the middle of the city.
also observe all the food stalls in front. Yum.
Sorry about these photos. I didn't have my camera on Saturday when of course the procession passed right in front of me.
What I love about shopping in Osu. Japanese are the best hipsters.
I may go back and buy this shirt.
We didn't see that much of the parade itself for the reasons stated above, but here's what we did see:
Kids from like teenage age down to like elementary school on REALLY TALL UNICYCLES
what looked like an all girl marching band, in snappy uniforms
The Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya's baseball team)!
We missed all the choreographed battles and cool stuff.
This weekend was incredibly busy!
First, on Saturday we went to go see Wicked! But before that Alisha and I had some delicious ramen.
Then we got to the theater where they were showing Wicked! I quickly bought some souvenirs, including the Japanese soundtrack.
It was a really interesting experience to see it in Japanese. I understand a lot more than I thought I would, mostly because I'd seen it before in English. But it was a little disappointing. There was definitely one point where the actress playing Elphaba didn't hit her note that I noticed, and I usually can't notice these things at all. Unfortunately that means everyone else who does notice these things was complaining about it, which just makes the whole thing feel negative to me, especially since I spent so much money on the CD before I actually sat down and saw it. Oh well, it's still a cool souvenir and it's interesting to compare the translations (right?! I'm trying not to get buyer's remorse here). I would assume that for the recording they'd make sure that everything sounded all right, but I have absolutely no ear for these things so I can't tell.
Anyway it was a bit of a bummer because I'd been really excited about it.
But it was still fun to see the show again, and I still love the costumes and everything. Glinda still stole the show for me, even in Japanese.
After that we went to Moss Burger, a Japanese fast food chain. It was only like 4 in the afternoon and I was going to have dinner at 7, so I didn't get a full burger, but I did get a small strawberry milkshake and OniPote. (oh-knee-poh-tay from onion-potato) It's the perfect solution for indecisive people who can't decide whether they want fries or onion rings! It gives you a little bit of each for the same price as getting either fries or onion rings! THIS IS SO BRILLIANT AND YET WE DON'T HAVE IT IN AMERICA. What's up with this?!
Then I went home, did homework, and crashed. That was Saturday.
Sunday was another matsuri trip! This one was to the Asuke Matsuri! It's in Asuke, a town a little more than an hour from Nagoya (driving, when the traffic's good). Apparently it's known for its fall leaves, and it's a popular date spot for that reason. But apparently once the leaves change it just gets PACKED with sightseers. I can imagine why. There's a lovely river running through town and the mountains are gorgeous and just covered in trees. I saw some postcards in a souvenir shop with pictures and it's incredible.
Anyway this was another men's festival, this time for Hachiman, a Shinto god of war.
This festival was a required class trip for research methods, as opposed to the other two which had been optional. So the entire class was there, and we did some more preparation beforehand.
Here’s the basics of what’s going on.
There are four dashi, these wheeled, tiered things. These dashi come from 4 parts of Asuke: Shinmachi, Nishimachi, Honmachi, and Tamachi. The dashi have three different levels. Inside on one level there are people playing musical instruments: a drum, a flute, and I think something else. The musical instruments are all the same, but the musicians from each village play a slightly different tune.
On the front of the dashi are the youngest men, who are all, apparently, around the age of their yakudoshi, or unlucky year, so around 25. They dance on the front of the dashi and apparently are just filled with sake throughout the day. Like, they get completely completely drunk. I’m amazed they don’t fall off the dashi.
(In fact, I asked one of the guys if people ever fell off. I didn’t understand everything he told me, but he said they definitely could fall off, that he was a safe guy, he never had fallen off, and that they try to make sure people don’t fall off, like holding onto them from inside the dashi and stuff.)
Anyway so this whole thing, this dashi, is pulled and pushed by a bunch of men, using ropes and the big wooden poles on the front of the dashi.
We got there a little before everything got started and were immediately approached by a guy from Honmachi saying that we were more than welcome to take pictures of their dashi and ask them questions and stuff.
After that the dashi were all pulled forward, one by one, so that they were directly in front of the Hachimangu, the shrine. They each set up a little altar and played a song for the kami, the god, while a priest (kannushi) blessed the dashi. From there the dashi moved onward and the festival started for the day.
Here's a video of the dashi moving out and the dancing and music starting.
In addition to the dashi, there are other villages that are a part of Asuke that aren't part of the main four, so they don't have their own dashi. These are villages that were incorporated into the Asuke area more recently, or something like that.
These villages have their own Teppotai, or, I guess, musket squad. These men get together and before the festival for weeks in preparation they hang out, drink beer, and make these straw things to decorate their guns. The guns are old ones, from around the Edo period.
The decorations vary some from group to group. Some had pinwheels, some had some autumn leaves, these ones had rainbow tassels.
The teppotai parade throughout the festival, and then at certain areas they circle up and fire their muskets.
You can see the whole process here. The sound was incredibly loud. You can see where my camera jumps a little!
We split off into groups, which means I wandered around with my friend Jessica. Our first priority was snacking/lunch. Takoyaki, yakitori (grilled chicken), crepes, chocolate covered bananas, ikayaki (grilled squid), yakisoba (fried noodles), okonomiyaki (like a pancake, with pork, cabbage, egg, and sauce), I love me some festival food. I only had enough stomach space for takoyaki and a crepe, though.
We walked back by where the dashi had been moved to, again set up with their little altars.
We skulked around and asked questions awkwardly, like "what are those bottles for?" and "Do people ever fall of the dashi?" and awkwardly got our pictures taken by old Japanese people!
Apparently foreigners are noteworthy out here. But one lady I managed to strike up conversation with after she took me and Jessica's pictures, so that was nice.
After a bit more wandering we ran into a woman who was actually from Tokyo, but had lived here. Her son had since moved back and this year was his first year being able to be a part of the teppotai group. She said it was her first time seeing the festival but she seemed really excited. She whipped out her iPhone and showed us pictures of him and we said we'd probably seen him when we were watching earlier. That woman was really nice. It's always exciting when I find I can have conversations with people, even only partially!
After we talked to that woman we reconvened as a class, and since the sound of the teppotai's guns going off every few minutes was getting a little unbearable, we went for a hike!
There were tons of people out fishing, and climbing on the rocks.
We walked up to a Buddhist temple, where an incredibly nice Buddhist monk told us about the temple, who built it, what it was for, and about his beliefs. He talked about the strong wood the temple is made out of, so that even in an earthquake it's fine, and about how tons of bugs come out in the summer, but they're living things too, so you can't harm them. I don't know, he was a really nice guy, letting us into the temple even when he was busy working, selling good luck charms and talismans and things.
It was a very calming experience after the noise and excitement of the festival.
THE SCARIEST OF BRIDGES
It was a cable suspension bridge and MY PROFESSOR and my classmates insisted on SHAKING IT
OH GOD STOP IT NO AAAHHH
After that we went out to dinner and Hoan ate cow and pig internal organs without knowing it! Yay!
I had chirashi sushi, a bowl of sliced sashimi (raw fish) and other sushi topics scattered over rice. It was yummy! And other people had delicious food, too. Hoan liked his innards fine, even after he found out what they were, so I guess that's okay.
It got dark after that, and the next stage of the festival started, the kind of closing festivities I guess.
The Teppotai (all very drunk) got back together in their groups and said goodbye to the dashi and the festival for the year, before heading back to their own villages.
The dashi moved back by the shrine. After that the most exciting part of the festival started.
The bonden, these paper pompom looking things suspended on bamboo poles from the front of the dashi play an important role here.
The white things are the bonden.
At the end of the festival, a guy from the top level of the dashi (who is completely wasted at this point) takes both of the bonden and throws them into the crowd. Whoever catches it brings good luck to their family for the rest of the year.
I was too far back and not near aggressive enough to see what actually happened, but my classmates who were closer told me that things got pretty intense.
Apparently last year two guys were fighting over it and then they finally settled it with janken (jankenpon is Japanese rock paper scissors)! Oh Japan!
Anyway after that the dashi had to be pulled back to each of their home villages, where they are disassembled and put away again for the next year.
We headed on home, where it was back to school as usual. But the trip itself was really fun!
I love this class and this professor yay!
Wow, I’m a little behind! Sorry guys. Let’s see, first a response to comments:
Andrea, welcome aboard! It’s fun to hear from you, and I hope you’re doing well too. As for the sink/bathroom configuration, I’m pretty sure it just depends on how the house was built. But my thinking is that Japanese houses are pretty small by and large. The bath set up is usually like this: A bathtub, with an open space next to it with a shower head and a stool for rinsing off, since the practice here is to clean your body, and then get in the bath to soak, as opposed to cleaning yourself in the bath. I imagine having more than one bath per house would require a pretty large house. In my host family’s house, there’s the bath and the toilet my host parents use downstairs (the two aren’t connected, they have separate rooms, and the shower is actually connected to the laundry room which makes sense). My bedroom is upstairs so they told me the upstairs sink and toilet were mine to use.
What was your situation like in France? Now I’m curious to hear more about it.
Mom, I thought the sweets were a bit too sweet. I needed a nice bitter cup of green tea to cut the sweetness. Also the chicken wasn’t all the way raw. It had been cooked most of the way through.
Lily, I’ve been lucky so far and had great weather for all of my trips. I’ve never actually been to a spa so I can’t make that comparison, but it seems like it’s probably similar. It probably depends on the onsen if there’s places to get massages and that kind of stuff. That’d be great though, mannn. I could use a shoulder massage like nothing else in the world.
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I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but going to festivals lately! Part of that is thanks to my class. My fieldwork research methods professor studies festivals, particularly the ways gender roles in festivals are changing. As a result, to kind of practice field work he’s invited us on a lot of field trips to festivals.
The first of these was the Imaike festival-turned-dinner-outing that I talked about before.
Two weekends ago we went to a town called Tarui, in Gifu prefecture, for the Tarui Taiko Matsuri, or Drum Festival.
The festival was held on the grounds of a local preschool in Tarui, this pretty small town. I don’t think the place itself was very well known, and it’s a pretty rural area. Other Japanese people we talked to about our trip hadn’t heard of it.
Our professor wouldn’t tell us anything about the festival before we got there. He told us anything we’d want to know we’d have to ask the people around us. Of course, that meant asking them in Japanese!
Well here’s what we managed to find out:
I’m not sure which deity this festival is for, but it’s asking for rain. The drums represent thunder and the puffy paper things people are holding that look like pompoms on sticks represent clouds. Each of those drums that the men are playing weigh, at their heaviest, 60 kg.
The performers have the drums tied to them, and carry them while drumming and doing a dance, too.
I took some videos:
Me and Tiffany, a girl in my class, by one of the drums after the festival itself ended.
We didn't get to the bottom of all of the symbols. For example, some of the people asked what the pink flowers on people's hats represented and I'm still not exactly sure.
After the festival all the drums get taken back to their "homes", in shrines around the town. We got to follow one back where the people play it one more time, and then put it away for the year.
But before they put it up, they let a couple of us give it a try. Since this is a men's festival, women aren't technically supposed to touch the drums, I don't think. But they let ladies give it a try. I think I ended up in an awkward in between space as a lady in jeans and a t-shirt with short hair. They didn't offer me a chance when the guys were going and they ignored me when they let a girl try it. D:
But here's Hoan, one of the guys in my class, getting strapped onto the drum.
And picking it up and playing it.
I think it's a balance and weight distribution thing more than anything. The guys said the drum itself didn't feel that incredibly heavy.
On the way back to the train station, we realized just how in the country we were.
Some scarecrows in some rice fields! You can see pretty clearly in these pictures the way agriculture and industry butt up directly next to each other. Japan doesn't go from city to countryside the way the US does. You'll be on the train in the city for five minutes and then you'll see houses, fields, more houses, and a bunch of stores and factories and stuff. And then there will be a bunch of houses, but interspersed every few streets will be more little pockets of fields. As Shaun put it on her blog "Zoning must work differently here."
Anyway it was a nice little trip and it was fun to get out to the country a bit more. This was my first real festival, and it means I got to eat my all time favorite festival food: TAKOYAKI. Yum.
