Komochi-Matsuri with Araki-sensei

Greetings all. You may have noticed that I took a fairly extended sabbatical from posting. This was due to a dramatic upswing in my life's activities due to joining a gym and starting dating again. Thanks to all who took notice. (meh meh meh, we want more content, wah wah waaah) As a result, until further notice blog posts will not be on any set schedule, but rather as events occur, or as I see fit. Cope. ^_^

Pseudo-recently, one of the old teachers from Kanashima Jr. High took me to a neighboring village to see the annual festival they have there. It's during the time of the second round of cherry blossoms (the seven-layer ones - less delicate and slightly longer-lasting than the paler variety that come out first of the year), and is highly regarded in the surrounding areas. Here are some pics.

This is the general ambience - the festival took place along a long street with a river flowing down the middle of it and sakura planted along the river, with really old buildings along both sides, and had vendors and shopping and things to eat and performances and all kinds of nifty traditional Japanese matsuri day stuff.

Here's me and Araki-sensei and his two kids, in front of a dashi. (Dashi? I think it's dashi. If somebody wants to do the research to correct me, feel free.) It's a traditional matsuri festival cart, similar to a Mardi Gras float or something, except these have a built-in music section. They all look similar, with variations of color and subtleties of design. There are four small drums on the front of the cart, and a big drum on one side and a brass gong/bell on the other side. In the center, a flute player carries the melody of the tune. The instruments are played with a certain amount of ceremony, but also a certain amount of enthusiasm, and the percussionists on the sides wear harnesses to keep from falling off, and seeing them lean way off the cart while leaning on their harnesses is fairly common. Fun times are had by all.

A better view of a dashi. The drummers up front have stylised drum beat arm motion routines that they coordinate beforehand, and they look pretty cool. The girl second from the left is one of my old students from Kanashima - I ran into a few of the 3rd graders who graduated last year at this festival, that was pretty cool.

One of the high points of any dashi event is when the male members of the dashi squad "pull the dashi." Understand that the dashi are all motorized, and require no manual effort to pull at all. Also understand that when they do this little ritual, there are blocks under the wheels. The sucker don't move. So all the male members of the squad line up holding two ropes attached to the front of the dashi, and on a signal, the two lines kind of slam into each other, jumping around and yelling and making a big spectacle of this farce that they're trying to move this thing, and meanwhile the leaders of the group are on the dashi blowing whistles and yelling encouragement. The two teams of rope pullers just kind of mosh there for a while, and nothing goes anywhere but everyone has a blast being unproductive. It's quite a scene. I have a video. It's very shaky, I was laughing quite hard.

Koto players and their apprentices. That was the first time I had seen the instrument played, I was very happy to.

A close-up of the 7-layer sakura.

The highlight of the day was the samurai procession. I didn't quite understand the tradition behind it, Araki-sensei's English and my Japanese are about on par, and neither is sufficient to hold an in-depth history discussion. I just about know the Japanese word for "history." I'm happy to know that. Anyway, traditions aside, it was cool just to see a bunch of guys dressed up as samurai parading up and down the street.

This guy was all buff. Despite the fact that the name of this prefecture is Gunma, literally "many horses," this is about the only horse I have seen the entire time I've been in Japan.

Here's a guy who I decided was cool enough to let pose with me.

Araki-sensei was a cool guy and bought his kids some fighting stag beetles. They cost him about 20 bucks per pair. For more info on this particular national obsession, I refer you to the links below. Beetle sumo is something that I just haven't gotten into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_rhinoceros_beetle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushiking

Here's a shot of Araki-sensei and his wife in their front yard. They have a pretty nice place, spacious for Japan. I think the house has been in the family for a while.

Well, I'm gonna call that a post. See you next time!