So, busy two weeks for me. Summer is festival time in Japan, and I've been seriously looking forward to it since pretty much the day I got here. Suffice to say, I'm happy. It's possible to volunteer in some of these festivals, and I plan to do that as much as I can.
Last week, there was a big festival called the Tenjin Festival here in town, and it involves a very large mikoshi (portable shrine). I had originally given up on volunteering for this one considering I'm so damn tall and I figured that would mess with everyone else that was carrying the thing. However, like so many other things, Naoko really helped out. I mentioned it in passing to her, and she took it upon herself to talk to her mom and get more info. Whereas I'm too lazy and just gave up when I thought it might be an issue, she called them, found out it would be okay, asked me if I still wanted to do it, got my clothes size, signed me up, and gave me directions to the place O.o I... feel like I just got showed up something fierce. Regardless, I was really excited and spent the whole week prior telling my students about it. It was two days before the festival when I found out through some of my students that the outfit involves short shorts...
I went anyways, and it was a blast. Here, have a couple pictures (I don't have many since I was carrying the damn thing and Naoko was working most of the day).
This is Dustin, the only other foreigner that was involved. He's kinda famous around here.
You can figure out which one is me, right? Notice how I'm suddenly the same height as everyone else? Yeah, try standing up straight when you have something that weighs over a ton on your shoulder and everyone else is at least a half a foot shorter than you are. God, my legs hurt so bad after that (and during it. Especially my thighs. Especially when we bounced it up and down).
Before we started, taken with my camera phone by some random guy that talked to me before we headed out. He seemed cool and is part of a hiking group, but I got a kinda creepy vibe from him. He kept insisting we could hike alone if we wanted. I'm not contacting him again... better safe than sorry, eh?
Overall, the thing took about 6 and a half hours with a really short afterparty when we were finished. We only carried the mikoshi for maybe 4 hours total, though. There was lots of waiting and ceremony (especially at the beginning. We got to stand in a sweltering hot courtyard for about 45 minutes watching a REALLY boring shinto ceremony. We took the mikoshi from the shrine to the temple, took a break, then carried it back (this time joined by two other smaller mikoshi. One for women, who were scary energetic, and one for a local bank... guess I can't judge, I'm sure we'd commercialize and sell out our cultural festivals in America if we really had any). The other two mikoshi were much smaller than ours, but who's counting? Me. I am. I am counting.
We had four teams on our mikoshi, and I was on red team. Most of my team was made up of first year high school students who were all part of a soccer team. That also meant they were some of the shortest people carrying it. There was a few times when I looked ahead of me and realized the thing wasn't even resting on their shoulders. Speaking of shoulders, if I do this next year, I'm bringing more padding. Dustin told me to bring some, so I did, but not enough. Especially because I'm tall, my shoulders were just annihilated by that thing. They were all red and swollen afterwards (especially my right one), and covered in bruises that are still kind of there.
Some random notes:
1.) While waiting at the castle to start again, I saw a cat climbing along the castle wall. This thing is probably 50 feet at least, almost completely vertical, and made up of rough-cut stones. This crazy fucking cat was walking along the tiny ledges of those stones. So cool. I was worried it would get scared and fall off when the muskets fired to announce our start, but it just ran faster like gravity doesn't affect cats or something.
2.) I got asked so many times if I was a student. Somebody even asked if I was a high school student. When I said no, he guessed junior high. I don't think he was joking...
3.) The whole time we were going, people were going back and forth with "soya" "sa". At first I didn't join in because I thought there was some pattern, but there really wasn't. People would just shout it out whenever, and some people just made random noises. The only important thing was to make our noise at the same time other people did, so I joined in. It made it more fun
Last Monday, I was thinking of going to actually see the festival (it was a Sunday/Monday thing), but my legs hurt so bad I could barely walk. All I did the entire day was play games and go grocery shopping (which was really difficult). It took like 3 or 4 days before I could walk without my lower legs hurting really bad. Worth it.
This weekend, I was planning to rest a bit in preparation for Suigosai (which is a big fireworks festival coming up soon). Looking back, in the past 3 weeks before now I climbed a mountain, explored a silver mine, and carried a massively heavy wooden and metal object. I thought it'd be good to rest. Then my buddy Mac told me there was a festival going on in Yonago, so away I went. The festival was called the Gaina festival, and there big shtick was organized teams (most were sponsored by companies) hoisting giant poles with lanterns attached in the middle of the street. I think they're called manto, but don't quote me on that. I got there a little bit late since it was on Saturday and I worked that day, but it was still really cool. Rather than pictures, I'm throwing out what I think is my first video on this blog. Excuse the start pointing at the ground. I thought I had to hit "play" or something, but as soon as you switch the camera to video mode, it starts recording.
*Stupid website is being stupid as always. Gonna retry posting the video later*
After that, Mac and I went out drinking with some of his friends and students. We had a blast, and I got to meet some cool people. We also met a random stranger at an okonomiyake place who was horrible at English... unless he was talking about American wangs versus Japanese wangs. Then he was fucking fluent or something. We finished at... 6:30 in the morning. Holy shit, I still have no idea how that happened. You ever walked out of a bar so drunk you can barely walk straight just to be bombarded with the bright rays of early-morning sunlight and gathering humidity? It's awful. We slept until about 2, then got up to get ready for the fireworks display that night.
Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this for three reasons. Foremost, I left my damn camera at Mac's apartment. Secondly and thirdly, however, Suigosai will be much bigger and I didn't want to bother fiddling with my camera to take pictures at night while trying to watch the first fireworks I've seen here. The display was pretty damn cool, but the people were kind of annoying. Mac and I went to claim our spots about an hour and a half early, and grabbed a couple of standing positions near the back of the crowd. There was still about 6 or 7 feet empty behind us at that point, but it filled up quickly. Now, Mac and I are both tall, but there were cameras in front of us and we didn't really want to sit, so we stayed standing. Of course, when the fireworks started, the people behind us (who were sitting down like most people), started to complain. I often feel bad about my height. I feel like I'm inconveniencing people and I get a little bit embarrassed, but this was not one of those times. These assholes got there later than us, chose to stand behind us when they knew where we were and the fact that we were standing, and chose to remained seated. Then they had they nerve to bitch at us like we were being rude. One person even grabbed Mac's hand and tried to tug him into a sitting position. Ridiculous, especially when you consider how bad people here are at paying attention to their surroundings and being courteous to other people. Whatever.
It really was a fun weekend, but I got a bit of a bombshell dropped on me. Mac is going back to the states at the end of this week. He had a family problem, work wouldn't give him the month of he requested, and now he's breaking contract and heading home. He says he's going to come back eventually, but there's no guarantee and he's aiming for Tokyo. Shit, there goes one of my only closer foreign friends here.
Today, my AC finally got fixed and I did pretty much nothing again. THE END!
Oh wait, random shit. Not much this week:
1.) Remember how I mentioned earlier that people don't pay any attention to the people around them? Yeah, this manifested in me getting hit by a bike and almost knocked into a busy road this week. Going across the bridge as I always do after lunch, riding my own bike, and a massive group of bike riders was coming from the opposite direction. As usual, they were spaced out to take up almost the entire walkway, so moved over and rode right next to the railing next to the road. Some idiot in the back then decided he was going to pull out into the only open area and try to pass them. Of course, he didn't bother to fucking look where he was going, staring off to the side instead. Seeing as how I couldn't move left or right and stopping wouldn't stop the collision, I got to watch as he finally looked forward, saw me, and failed to move out of the way in time. Slammed into the side of me, tore a small hole in my only pair of dress shoes, and almost knocked me over the railing. He looked back at me in complete bewilderment, didn't apologize, and rode off.
2.) Last week, I ate a bug in class. This was not intentional. I was turning to correct a mistake a student made, with my mouth open of course because I was about to make noise come out of it, and a bug just flew right in and down my throat. It was a small bug, but it was still enough to completely surprise the shit out of me.
