festival a go-go

With summer comes celebrations aplenty. In the past 2 weeks alone I've been fortunate enough to attend 3 of the hundereds celebrations being held this summer around the country. First one I hit up, about two weeks ago, was Shinji's very own "Renge-san". I don't know what it means or why we celebrated it, but it was kicked off on a Thursday with an organized dancing. Kids and Adults alike did some kind of coordinated dance which was really pretty cool. One of the dancers was my favorite kindergarten teacher, a super fun lady, who is always smiling.

That night I saw Kaori, one of my eikaiwa (adult conversation) students with her family. She has two girls and a boy. Her oldest daughter is a student at the Junior High and who at this very moment is doing a small study abroad in New Zealand. Her middle child, Riku, is a little ball of kinetic energy....he never sits still, is always talking, and often runs off much to his mothers displeasure. And then there's Momoko, her youngest girl, who I just love. Absolutely one of the cutest little girls I've ever met. Every once in a while, she will come with her mother to the conversation class and its just a ball. Kaori's husband, whose name I can never remember is a super nice guy as well.

As I was about to walk home that evening I passed this little tent when out of no where a woman ushered me underneath asking the men under it if anyone knew English. Just so happened the past-mayor of Shinji did and while giving me saucer after saucer of sake, explained that I should hang around to watch what happened next. I obliged and followed a small procession from Shinji's most famous building, an old samurai house, to the local Shrine. Not very long after we started, a very small, very old, and very drunk man grabbed my arm and proceeded to explain everything to me. It mattered not how many times I told him I didn't understand a word he was saying, he held on to my arm and chattered on for the next hour. What I witnessed, was a select group of 8 men, who carried a intricately decorated "box" about the size of a large doll house, on a litter type of frame, from the shrine all around town. Behind them, a group of 30 or so adults (including me and my new buddy) and as we walked, families came out to watch us go by. Many of students were quite astonished to see me in the procession. About every ten minutes or so, the men would start chanting and spinning the litter with the box on top. Once I figured this was pretty much it for the evening, I regained ownership of my arm on the pretense of finding a toilet. No doubt the old drunk man was telling me about what we were watching, I just wish I could have understood even a nugget of what he was talking about.

The next day was the main celebration of "Rengesan". That night two of my good buddy's Nick and Colin, and Colin's girlfriend Maya came out to little old Shinji where we watched fireworks from a parking lot turned "Beer Garden". After which, we dabbled in the vendor foods and said hello more than once to past and present students who were cruising up and down the main drag. Amazingly enough, alot of them came up to us. Mostly to ask if Maya was my girlfriend, but none the less they'd initiate a conversation....in English. (success)

Usually at these summer festivals, you'll see girls and women dressed up in "Yukata's". They're basically a summer kimono and look amazing. That night ended with me accompanying Colin and Maya, to her uncle's house, where we preceded to light more fireworks, eat and drink more and watch her young cousins play about. (SIDENOTE- I can say most definitely that my Japanese is improving nicely as these type of situations are no longer awkward. I still do not understand most things said to me, but I can feign understanding and ask simple questions to change to topics in which I can correspond to some degree.)

Then that Sunday, I went to Yonago, a town about an hour northeast of here, to celebrate a friends birthday that happened to coincide with that towns big summer celebration called "Matsuri". The big cool thing about this festival is the lantern balancing. Imagine a long bamboo pole that has around 20-30 lanterns that are about a meter tall branching off of the main stem. Team members, very strong and sake intoxicated men, take turns balancing the pole on a hand, a shoulder and for the well practiced, their forehead. As you can imagine, balancing anything on your hand is no small feat. Balancing a 30 foot pole, drunk, is an adventured all in itself....and yes, sometimes things get dropped!

Yonago is on scale with Matsue (180,000 people) so there was a pretty good crowd lining the boulevard that the 15-20 or so teams of lantern holders slowly walked down. At the end of the boulevard, was a large platform, where judges watched each team, one at a time, impress us all for a select period of time. Once the teams got to this point, they were pretty warmed up and pushing the"bamboo pole balancing" envelope. That is to say, the very good teams, kept on adding meter long extensions that raised the lanterns to at least 30 feet above the ground. It was an awesome sight.

Then this past weekend was Matsue's turn to celebrate again something I am unable to figure out. Matsue's festival is called "Suigosai" and it is the first thing I remember after coming to Shimane just a year ago. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, this event, which is more or less just two days of big fireworks shot off over the lake, was my "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment. A year older and wiser, it was another great chance to relax with my friends next to the lake, meet some of the newly arrived ALT's and sort of reflect on the past year.

Folks come out in throngs for this event. Some families arrive early in the morning just to stake down their tarp or blanket so as to have prime viewing later on in the evening. Its a two day affair, but really Saturday is just a tease, everything about it is smaller in scale. Much to my delight I found a beer vendor selling Corona's with lime....its the little things right? And what would a festival be without vendors selling useless junk or junk food? As far as food goes, almost everything is fried here just like it is at the old county fairs....chicken, fries, corn dogs, etc. Of course there's a shaved ice stand for the kiddos. Authentic to Japan, there's octopus and squid on a stick (which are both really good by the way), a spaghetti like dish called yakisoba, and some other stuff that I haven't ventured an attempt at yet.

So there you go, its been a fun, hot sweat past couple of weeks and the summer isn't even half way over yet. This weekend we got a Jazzfest and more festivals just down the coast. Wahoo!