Saturday, October 16, 2004



OK!! So it is a week later but I have finally scanned all the pictures and written down the words,
Sooooo…..
Festival weekend!!

Well as you know Saturday was a right-off due to the typhoon. We weathered it no problems. My Japanese teacher and her father discovered a pretty major leak in the roof of the house that had her mother running around squawking. My one student was sitting in his living room when his one small window crackled. Other then that Fujieda was fine.
No accidents as no one ventured outside.

We slept in a tad on Sunday and then headed off to the station to meet Kim and head out to Shimada. We did a quick look for the Fujieda South Eki Matsuri but couldn't find anything. I later was told that nothing started until after 1:00. Oh well.
We headed out to Shimada for the Obi Matsuri and had a pretty good time. There were lots of people but we saw TONS! I was in the mood for human shots as I had gotten quite a few pics from the last Matsuri 4 years ago. There are some of last times pictures on my picture page if you want to see those.

This years pictures are at:

Shimada Obi Matsuri

I was really into overly cute tired girls. They look soooo adorable in their costumes and all girrrllllyyyy.

I also finally got a really good shot of the raccoon sculpture that makes all raccoon's happy.

We then headed out to the big Oii Jinja. Wow is it nice. A Jinja is a Shinto temple. This one is not huge but for a small town like Shimada it is really very nice. It was also very crowded.
There was this guy there that was selling grapes on a stick covered in sugar. Kim and I had to buy one of course. HUGE SUGAR RUSH!!!

We also gave the good luck cow a pat on the nose.
At one point we were walking along and this guy grabbed Li's shoulder and starting staring at him in awe and repeating, Handsome, handsome handsome, over and over again. In Japanese of course. Li's eyes popped out of his head as he carefully backed away just a tad disturbed by it all. We went into this one knick knack store and this guy, whom we think was very drunk, asked me if I was NiSei. That is second generation Japanese! Uhh nooooo.......
He kept pointing at my cheek bones and making comments about my skin. We did not totally understand him. All we understood was that he was a NiSei. Very confusing. Then when we got back to Fujieda I was approached by a Peruvian asking me if I spoke Spanish.
I have an identity crisis problem here in Japan.

Anyway, Li went out after dinner on Sunday to go and sing Kereoke with his Chinese friends. He didn't get home until 4 and he was sooooo drunk, it was actually slightly amusing. He woke up the neighborhood parking his bike. Knocked a bunch over in the process. Then his hiccups could be heard down the street. That made me giggle. Then he got his keys caught on the stairs and he had a hell of a time getting up them. He fell into bed and was gone.
Dip shit.
But he was a good boy and woke up the next day. We were meeting different friends for the Obi Matsuri Parade.
The parade shows all of the costumes. We went to the very end spot where they do some extra special dancing and praying of thanks to the gods and priests for good luck. We got to get very close and were very lucky with some good pictures. We also had this little old lady who gave us a bit of history about the parade and obi's.
As I said before, the obi is the kimono belt. Well the kimonos are pretty damn expensive but the obis are pretty special too. In this parade we had two obis worth more that 20,000 bucks each and some rare ones brought up from Kyoto and Kobe. There are specially trained people whose only job is to tie an obi properly. If you have old ones they are never worn but displayed. If you can afford it they are displayed behind glass. Well quite a few years ago - during the black and white photo age - this one fairly wealthy man from Shimada wanted to display his special obis for the city people. Back then people could not rent or even borrow an obi like they do now. You had to get them specially made for your wedding or ceremony. Rich people obviously had some nice ones.

Well this man had a fair collection due to the obis being passed down through the generations. He didn't want an ordinary museum display, he wanted them shown in their traditional way - hanging off the swords spear container thingyies that the private guards of the local lord wore. I called these guys the bar butt dudes. Still dont know what they are really called.

His idea grew into a whole parade of cultural costumes. There are many ages of costumes - 7 in this parade - and they are worn by all ages and members of the city. The parade resembles that of a lords procession. Like when the president moves from one place to the next, there is a series of police personal guards, multiple cars and different people traveling in rank of importance. The parade lasts for HOURS and includes dancing all the way through it. The horses represent the lord and his sons, the little girls his daughters - each group surrounded by special guards of a different era. Then there are the priests who bless the lord and the head priest on his own special cart.

There is also the TenGu god, that I call the tenki god which basically means the god of the heavens. He is a scary looking dude but he is supposed to bless the city with good weather. As it is harvest time there were a couple of different ceremonies thanking the god for a plentiful harvest.

We stayed for as long as we mentally could but after 5 hours it was time to go home. We watched a little bit of the yatais - crazy drunk dudes pulling carts with no steering and banging on drums -
then we headed home and crashed.
Next day -work. UGH!

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::10/16/2004 :: 0 Comments:

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