Asuke Matsuri

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!

Kanazawa Field Trip

First, response to comments.

Shaun, okay, more thoughts on sociology babble.  We talked about social class on Friday in my Japanese Culture/sociolinguistics class.  Our teacher was asking us about what we can perceive just from a conversation about the weather and we all mentioned social class.  She then asked us how many classes there were in each of our countries.  The Australians were very adamant about there being two: upper and lower.  The Americans got the most fuzzy about the boundaries and talked a lot about upper-middle vs. middle vs. lower middle, along with super-wealthy vs. upper class and working poor vs. like, really really poor.  A lot of people thought we were overthinking it, but I think that really is the way Americans seem to talk about class, particularly the trying to incorporate everyone into the middle class.
Our professor said if you ask the average Japanese person, they'll say Japan doesn't have socioeconomic classes, that everyone's in the same kind of class.  Not sure what conclusions to draw from this, but it's interesting.



To Mom and everyone else worried about the IV, I had other people confirm for me too that that's definitely a much more normal move in Japan, like Shaun was saying.





To Lily and Nancy,  I'm feeling just fine now, thanks for your concern!

Nancy, I'm really having a great time here, the typhoon just overwhelmed me is all!
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This weekend we went on a field trip to Kanazawa!
It’s a traditional style village about a four hour drive from Nagoya.

All 24 of the people from my study abroad program were together on a charter bus.  It was funny because it was the first time we’d been together like that since our four day orientation in Inuyama, when we’d all just gotten to Japan and were jet lagged and didn’t know each other at all.  Suffice to say this time was much more fun!

On the way we stopped at a Buddhist temple, Eiheiji.  I’m not really sure what the significance of this particular temple is, but it’s very large.  I took a few pictures, but mostly of the landscaping in and around the temple. 

I don’t know the significance of anything, so it’s hard to really talk about what we saw.  But there was this huge tatami room near the front that had these really cool painted panels on the ceiling.
There were also lots of monks and monks in training walking around doing... whatever monks do, but we were expressly forbidden to take pictures of them. 

This is where it would have been nice to have taken some Japanese culture, history, religion, etc. type classes before coming here.  Hopefully I’ll know more by the time we get to Kyoto.

We hit the road again, and went to another building to do what our itinerary called “a gold leaf sticking experience”.  Kanazawa is famous for its gold leaf so we got to do this little workshop where we designed and gold-leafed the lid to a little box we got to keep!
IT WAS REALLY HARD.  We had two different thicknesses of tape to mask off areas of the box we didn’t want covered in gold or silver leaf, and then we got glue painted on our boxes, and cut pieces of the sheets of gold and silver leaf to stick down.  Then a coating gets painted over it.  After it’s dry you can take your tape off and see what your design looks like.

The guy running the workshop only gave us 15 minutes to design something!  Other people managed to do some really cool stuff, but I knew that if I tried to do something complicated I’d probably screw it up, so after whining about how I didn’t know what to do for a few minutes I decided to just do something really simple.  The lines are uneven and that bothers me a bit, but when your only tools are tape and you there’s only so much you can do...!

The silver leaf in particular was really difficult to work with.  It just kind-of dissolved if you (I swear) breathed on it the wrong way.  The stuff was set up with a layer of plastic, the leaf, and a layer of thin paper.  Right before you stuck it down to the box you were supposed to remove the paper.  But I swear it static-ed to the plastic and screwed me up! ughhhh.

In the end I was happy with the results though.

After gold leaf we hit the road again, for the ryokan where we were spending the night.  On the way, we drove along the coast!

Arriving at the ryokan meant more crazy ryokan dinners where you start out with more courses than you can possibly eat

This is that broth you see in the background with the raw meat and vegetables that were sitting on the plate on the side now cooking in it.

and then they bring you more

not pictured, the tempura, miso soup, rice, and dessert they brought later.

And of course I had just been sick two days previous so I was still working my stomach up to being able to eat full sized meals again!  Needless to say this was impossible.

(I finally asked my host mom if it’s really possible for anyone can eat all that.  She says Japanese people can do it.  Even though they’re small, they can put away all that food.  They don’t normally do it but if they go to a ryokan it’s apparently chow down time.)

Here’s a picture of our room.  We were in groups of six this time.  I ended up in the room with all the quiet people, which was perfectly fine, they’re all great people, but I ended up going to another room and hanging out and getting to know some of the other people from my program better, which was really really fun!

The ryokan we stayed at had 3 different onsen, public bath/hot spring things.  We only had one night there so we chose to do the Grand Onsen Tour, as I referred to it in my head.  Going to each of the different baths in the evening after dinner.  One was a normal one of the style they had at Inuyama, indoors.  We went there first because we had to wash our bodies and stuff first because you weren’t supposed to do that at the other two, and you had to be clean before getting in the bath.
After that there was another bath where you bathe naked like in a normal bath, and it’s outside, but there’s a roof over your head.  That one was really nice because the air was cool, and the water was really hot, but I didn’t spend that much time there because I actually started getting a little too hot.  I feel like it gets a little hard to breathe sometimes if you’re just sitting in really hot water.

The best one was the totally outdoor bath.  This one wasn’t separated by sex, so everyone was given a little wrap to wear.  It was dark because it was probably like 9:00 at night, so I couldn’t really see the scenery around, but the water and the rocks around it were really pretty.  You could feel the cool fall air, which kept the bath from feeling too hot, and you could really just relax.  It was awesome.  After you got out of the bath and changed back into your yukata and stuff there was cool tea for you, too.  It was wonderful.

The next day we actually went to Kanazawa.  As you can tell, it’s a touristy spot for Japanese people, too.
One complaint I have about my study abroad program is they never quite give us enough time to explore places.  It’s like, an hour here, two hours there (usually only an hour though) and then we’re moving on.  So unfortunately we really only kept to the main streets.

First we all were given admission to this old tea house that had been turned into a museum, and maybe if we’d had some kind of information or a tour or something it would have been more interesting, but I think most of us kinda rushed through it to get onto other stuff.
Along with the gold leaf, Kanazawa’s known for pottery, so I was on a pottery shopping mission.

After walking around the old district of Kanazawa and doing some souvenir shopping, we moved to another part of town and split up to have lunch and explore Kenrokuen, one of Japan’s three most famous gardens. 
It was very pretty, but it was a little disappointing because it’s right at the end of summer, beginning of fall here.  So nothing was flowering and the leaves haven’t changed yet.  We walked by sakura and plum trees and all this stuff and I never would have known if it weren’t for the map.
But I really like the way Japanese gardens use water and bridges and stones along with all the greenery, so it was still cool.

And we also saw this one plant that was just full of butterflies!

It apparently snows a lot in Kanazawa in the winter, and the snow gets really heavy, so a lot of the trees have supports like these attached to them to keep the snow from breaking off the branches in the winter. 

After the garden (and more souvenir shopping) we went to a workshop for making Japanese sweets.  Here are the examples.

I’m not sure entirely what they’re supposed to look like, other than one is a flower, but they were pretty.  There were pictures on the wall of other sweets you could buy, too, and they were really pretty and detailed and colorful.

You started out with balls of anko, or sweet read bean paste, and balls of other colorful stuff, which I think was colored bean paste?  Making the sweets was actually surprisingly easy.  The bean paste was incredibly moldable.  You just patted it flat, wrapped it around the bean paste filling, and closed it up, and then shaped it.  Of course my attempts didn’t turn out nearly as nice as the samples, but the techniques themselves were pretty simple to execute.

Here’s me, Paochu, one of the girls from my program, and Masae, one of my program coordinators with our sweets!

After that we were on the road again for our four hour drive home.

On the way there and on the way back, we stopped a couple times for fifteen minute breaks at service areas.  The Japanese answer to a truck stop is, like most mass-produced Japanese things (i.e. convenience stores), much nicer seeming than the American version.  The bathrooms are clean (!), and there are a bunch of shops and restaurants inside.  We didn’t have time to stop and eat at the restaurants, just buy snacks, but apparently the restaurants are pretty good, too.  Katrina, a girl on my program, said that her host mom took her on a trip and said “Oh we’ve got to stop at this cool place on the way they have good food I’ll have to take you there sometime!” and it was a service area...! 

Mysterious.