My Kind of Weekend, Part II

Once the movable feasts got going, they kept moving: For the next 5 nights, Kenny, Stephanie, Fumie, a motley crew of other area JETs, and I chased old-calendar New Years' festivals back and forth across the prefecture, evening work and weather be damned.

Next in queue was the Kariwano Tug-of-War Festival, an easy hour and a half from Oga-- and, like many of the other area events, in the form of an easy-going competition. Divided into two teams with the names of now-defunct neighborhoods and colored Red and Yellow, the village pulls for the thrill of victory and to determine the result of the coming year's rice planting season. (1) Now, a village-wide tug-of-war calls for a big rope...

Will this do?

Made of rice straw and festooned with dozens of extra lateral ropes for the teams to grab, the immense cable was as big around as a man and extended well outside of the "official" festival area, in the midpoint of the village's main street. As we walked through a shower of increasingly chunky frozen rain towards the far-off sound of canned flute music and the smell of fried festival food, we were accosted by several younger festival-goers: 

<Wow, foreigners! Are you here for the festival?>

<Well, sure! You too, huh?> 

<Yeah!> 

<If I wanted to participate, what would I have to do?>

<Uh?> 

Assuming my Japanese had let me down, I gave it another shot: 

<What do I do to join in?>

<Grab a rope and pull!> 

Was it really that simple? The explanatory PA was helpfully announcing a brief break before the beginning of festivities in earnest, so with time to spare we went to scope out the food stands.

Even fairground food comes in "regional specialty" varieties: the people of nearby Yokote have made this humble yakisoba their own by adding a sunny-side up egg and deleting (most of?) the pork. They probably wouldn't let you patent it, but it's at least a tasty variation on prior art.

Staff manning the nearby free sake tent assured me, straining a bit to be heard over the pulsating polyrhythms of the local middle-school taiko team, that we were welcome to join in with the pulling. 

<Have you picked a side?> 

<Well...> 

<You should just stay over here and work for us then!> 

<OK, sounds great!> 

<Another cup?> 

From where we stood by the festival tent, I could see the preparations in more detail: 

Unbelievably, the immense rope was in two sections, with the Yellow Team's side (now, apparently, my side) a plain end and Red's terminating in a eyesplice large enough to crawl through. Before the competition, there'd have to be a knot tied. But first, the warmup act. Two groups of men, dressed  as Red and Yellow team representatives (2) in headbands, baggy pants, and happi began gathering between the untied ends. 

<AND NOW, THE JOSTLING (押し合い/oshiai）WILL BEGIN!> announced the PA. 

To dialect chants of "JOISA, JOISA" (3) tougher-looking members of the sides strutted towards each other, grappled a bit, and began pushing back and forth while jumping up and down. First in trickles, then in waves, each side's guys ran towards the building knot. Then, when conditions seemed right, one or more guys would make a run at the pile, clamber on top of the mass, and wave for a lantern emblazoned with their teams' name. Spurring the crowd they were surfing on to greater efforts, the riders waved their arms and tried their best to keep their tippy seats. Before long, they fell, the crowd dispersed-- and then someone else danced out into the middle. 

The thrill of victory...

...and the agony of defeat.

Our new buds got pretty pumped.

It looked much more like goofy fun and less like an actual competition-- so much that Kenny and I, standing on the edge of the crowd on the Yellow side, began debating with increasingly serious intent  whether it'd be all right to jump in. Just then, I felt a push from behind. The guy from the sake tent had his hand on my shoulder.

 <Go ahead and go for it!> 

<Really?> 

We didn't need another invitation. Kenny and I tossed off our coats and dove headlong into the steaming scrum, yelling "JOISA" in time.  Somewhere along the line Kenny took a glancing elbow to the nose and I ended up in the stinking center of the mass, supporting the full weight of one of the lantern guys's butts with my face. Needless to say, it was a blast. 

An indeterminate, sweaty, yelly interval later, the PA announced the end of the oshiai, and, high-fiving our comrades, we retreated to the sidelines. With the warmup finished, it was time to hook up and pull. 

Marshals organize the tying...

.... while we wait for instructions.

I never quite did see how exactly they got the thing tied up. But I can tell you it took nearly 45 minutes of coordinated pulling from each side. 

Almost there.

Moments before the starting gun. 

And pull we did, when at last the time came. It had seemed almost unbelievable, even with half the town pulling each end, that the huge rope would move at all, but once each side (4) got their backs into it, the huge cable came alive, leaping inches off the ground as we strained in time to the marshals' chants of <YOI.... SHOOO! YOOI.... SHOOO!> (READY, PULL! ). We strained for a few moments in the middle, me leaning my full weight into the 2-inch horizontal hawser I was sharing with a foursome of coutured Korean tourists, Kenny dragging his feet into the ice to get a better grip. We grunted back and forth for half a minute as my hands began to lose their grip on the slick rope. Behind me I could hear straining in three or four languages. Then, in spite of it all, the advantage slipped. Korean noises of surprise told me the pullrope had parted, dropping the girls from Seoul on their designer-jacketed butts. Kenny lost his footing and slid feet-first through the muddy slush trying to right  himself. A triumphant shout rose from the Red Team as it pulled itself into a patch of ice-free tarmac down the road, and redoubled its efforts.

In the end we never did manage to get the momentum back, and Red dragged us more than 100 meters up the road as if it were nothing. But, backs sore as we high-fived through the crowd back to our car, it felt like a fantastic victory. 

(1) No matter who wins the result is good fortune. If one side wins, the year's yield is good; if the other side does, the price merchants pay for the crop will rise. Almost like they were trying to game the system!

(2) Or like medieval workmen itching for a fight-- bare-chested in the cold, many wore strips of cloth called sarashi wound round their middles-- a practice that Edo-period brawlers took up to protect against slashes to the gut, and present day gangster-movie yakuza and tough-guy anime characters still affect. Incidentally, the same binding cloths also were instrumental in creating the flat-chested ideal kimono body of the premodern era. I'm afraid you get no points for effort if you guessed that innumerable period dramas play both facts off each other to create beautiful Sweet Polly Oliver/Huā Mùlán/ Nakano Takeko warrior princesses who mysteriously find the need to fight in their old-timey underwear... 

(3) Or something like that. Not even the folks I asked in the crowd could tell me what it meant exactly. Consensus suggested <良いさ、良いさ> / Yoisa!, Yoisa!/ GOOD!, GOOD!, as a possible antecedent... which suggests some interesting connections.

(4) I'd guesstimate there were 400 people there in all pulling.

My Kind of Weekend

Owing to 19th century calendar reforms, the 25th regnal year of the Heisei Emperor officially began on January 1st, but out here in the provinces, the festal calendar is more closely tied to the Chinese calendar than the Gregorian. Lucky for me, Lunar New Year fell on a three-day weekend in this Year of the Snake, leaving me plenty of time to get out to the first of Akita's many midwinter festivals.

First on the docket: A Saturday night visit to the namahage's second yearly appearance, the 柴灯祭／りSedo Matsuri. 

Although their yearly work of scaring the dickens out of local children is long done, having been moved to Gregorian New Years', the namahage of Oga also make a yearly visit to the mountain shrine at Shinzan, the official "center" of namahage activity, torches (柴灯/sedo) (1) in hand, in order to mug for the cameras of tourists from far and wide. Along with Kenny, Stephanie, and a gaggle of our acquaintances from Akita City, I went to check out the festivities.

At the Namahage Museum next door, a live demo of mask-carving was on.

As darkness fell, we headed up the hill to the shrine itself, where braziers had been lit and banners hung to announce the festival.

The imposing gate, with (nominally Buddhist) guardian statues, tagged with important visitors' names on pasted stickers/ofuda. 

Also present were the usual complement of festival street food tents-- this one selling takoyaki.  I had a steamed  an dumpling and a bowl of tsukimi-udon further down the hill. 

I paused at the top to pay my respects to the mountain gods enshrined in the main hall... 

... and purchase a package of good luck New Years' mochi and a bamboo cup (free refills!) of sanctified sake/ 神酒 (shinshu) from a nearby stall manned by miko.

While we waited for the night's "official" namahage to make their appearance, I followed the crowd further into the compound... and found myself at the head of the line for the "Namahage Transformation Corner":

Using the term "transform" （変身）might cause you to expect something different...

UWOOOOOAAARRGGGGHHHHH

I wasn't out of my borrowed raincape and skirt long when I noticed the crowd packing in around a rope-cordoned (2) space towards the center of the shrine's courtyard. Inside: a gaggle of priests and a miko in full dress, an altar bearing offerings of rice, salt, and fish, and a vigoriously boiling cauldron of water. A portable PA system, set up a semirespectful distance from the enshrined space, crackled into life. (3) <AND NOW>, it intoned, <THE FESTIVAL WILL BEGIN WITH TRADITIONAL RITES AND CEREMONIAL DANCE>.

With things officially underway, the clerics disappeared up the hill above the main shrine. The crowd turned as, lo and behold, from the top of the mountain came men dressed in rain capes, carrying namahage masks and bamboo torches in their hands. Now the PA carried the sounds of the priests as they officially invested the men (入魂, nyuukon, "enter-spirit") with the spirits of the namahage. With a yowl, the men donned their masks, ignited their torches, and stalked back up the hill. While we waited for them to return, the PA helpfully directed us to watch a recreation of the "traditional" visit of namahage to a local home:

followed by a performance by a local taiko drum group, appropriately garbed for the occasion:

Yells from the top of the hill announced the end of the taiko set. The namahage were descending, fifty in all, representing each village's unique style of masks and equipment. Extinguishing their torches and taking up their knives, buckets, and axes, they descended on the crowd-- with plenty of growling and getting in people's faces of course:

Two of the group peeled off for a dance number:

And then it was time for photos before heading home:

ANY BAAAD CHILDREEEENNN?????!!!

(1) n.b: The more standard term is taimatsu/松明. 
(2) And hence ritually purified. The technical term is himorogi.  Cf shimenawa, yorishiro. 
(3) It being impossible in this day and age to have a traditional festival in Japan without explanatory comment.

総員、緊急体勢！

CONDITION RED! SEAL SUITS AND DOG BLAST DOORS! ACTION STATIONS ALL HANDS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL, REPEAT, NOT A DRILL! 

From the Annals of Japanese Technology, another page: This is the touchscreen control panel of the specialized computer system installed in the teacher's lounge at Oga Minami, which allows the precision remote monitoring and control of... every one of the dozens of the gas-powered space heaters in the classrooms which serve in place of a central HVAC system. In view of the fact that most of the rest of the building (which has no heaters) is only a little above the freezing point this means that when the system goes down it not only rings fantastically space-y alarms (pity the poor secretarial staff, whose desk is next to the control panel) , flashes room-by-room EQUIP. ABNRML. OP. CND. warnings (the orange squares on the subsystem status panel at top) and a huge CONDITION RED indicator (1) on the master alarm annunciator, but things get real cold, real fast. In the teacher's room, all hands rushed to battle stations: Winter coats and gloves were donned in one bold rush, and the Vice-Principal took to the PA to cancel clubs, caution those feeling under the weather to call their parents for immediate rescue, and ask those remaining to seek shelter in the main meeting room, which was redundantly heated. Before long, outriders from the BoE had arrived in the person of Ms. Furuyama, with the men of the heating company galloping close behind. When the system was finally rebooted (presumably they switched SCE to AUX) and the heat came back on normally it almost felt like an anticlimax...






(1) In even more amusing Japanese fashion this is indicated by writing the word コンディション／"kondishon" in katakana, and overlaying it on a red square to indicate the master warning condition. I hope it's only the Air Force they wash you out of if you're colorblind, not teaching school! 

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan

A 100% representative sample (I promise!) of the scanty collection of works in Akita Prefectural Library's English-language books section. (1)

Looks like Japan is... let's see... big on beautiful traditional crafts, religion, societal pathology, and violent death. Let's go to print!

 (1) "You don't really live somewhere until you've got a library card" has always been my motto, and since the one-room Oga Municipal Library (above a satellite Board of Health Office!) doesn't promise to offer me much more than the sheer pleasure of surprising the staff by turning in my card application, I decided to hit the larger Akita Prefectural Library. Ended up coming home with not only the expected reaction <Erm, do you have anything that can prove you live here on you?> but a good pleasant afternoon read, the expensively out-of print book on minka (Japan's Folk Architecture) in the photo above, and a Japanese copy of the Tale of the Heike, which I keep planning to read but (as yet) have never been able to take much beyond 祇園精舎の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響き有り/ "In the bells of Gion Monastery echo the Impermanence of All Things", despite the promise of poignant infant-Emperor-drownings, Nuns-of-Second-Rank, and belly-ripping, gut-throwing carryings-on in the later pages. 

And how is the weather today, class?

Perhaps it was a mistake to complain about the snow last week-- because it's only picked up since. Did I say the snow was too great in quantity for my first, non-dump snow shovel? I accidentally snapped its head off on Thursday.

A night scene on the way back from Higashi, my short drive home. 

My staffroom contacts assert that things are worse than they should be at this time of year-- and though I doubted at first, lately even the mighty Japan Rail network has been hobbled by the weather: Although shinkansen service to Tokyo and points south continued as normal, the little two-car dinkies of the Oga Line were running (with five minute delays!) on a restricted schedule on Saturday, an event of such magnitude that Kenny was summoned to evacuate his country girlfriend from her city job, and I overheard local tongues wagging in Oga as if the Earth had suddenly reversed in its orbit. Did I lightly accuse the Japanese of leaning too heavily on the weather as a topic of conversation when first I came here? In Akita, they're entitled to it!

Espressoda

The work of an ALT is never done-- lately, in my out of class hours, I've been writing a presentation on very short notice for a prefectural sectional meeting scheduled for Friday, as dark rumors swirl about the fellow-- an acquaintance of mine-- who was planning to do the talk in the first place. Supposedly he walked to a doctor's office feeling a bit under the weather, and ended up being IV'd and ambulanced straight over to the hospital. Familiar as I am with the Japanese medical establishment's taste for billable inpatient care (1) I doubt he's exactly at Death's door, but dead or alive, he's not going to make it out on Friday.

Heaving a sigh, therefore, I give you a brief update:

Recall to mind Espressoda, the bargain bottle of coffee-pop I picked up on a lark at Amano. Doubtless you had some notions of what a coffee flavored soda might taste like. Perhaps a pleasant Kahlua-type aroma? Or perhaps you remembered my previous comments on Japanese coffee and expected something a bit less like coffee but not altogether unpalatable? Or did you fear the worst?

I assure you, whatever you guessed, your expectations fell far short of the truth. Espressoda ranks near to the top of the scale as possibly the vilest anything I have ever drunk. There are undoubtedly actual poisons that taste less disgusting. Imagine the worst coffee you've ever had: maybe the acid dioxin tang of singed truck-stop robusta, brewed before sunrise, and cold the next day in a styrofoam cup. Boil down a gallon of the stuff till it's thick and gritty and sweeten it with a twist of antifreeze. Serve on the rocks with club soda. Now imagine a concentrated jab of that flavor right where it hurts.

It should say something that I didn't even think to take a picture of the open bottle before throwing it away. Adventure finds me again. Maybe next time, I'll go for THE PUNGENCY!











[1] Not to mention injections, which loom disproportionately large in the popular mind. Things have officially Gotten Serious when the patient gets A Shot in Japanese media, and as far as I can tell, real doctors seem to be doing their best to keep up. Whenever sick coworkers are mentioned in the teacher's lounge, their condition is informally judged by how many injections they've gotten, and when I showed up to the nurse's office at AIU with an itchy (but relatively minor) allergic reaction, she couldn't stop talking about all the needles I was probably going to get jabbed with as she shooed me off to specialist care. (Thank goodness she was wrong!)

What the after Christmas-season does to mark down prices in the US, the post-New Year's period does in Japan-- even in the grocery store, as AMANO and the other retailers do their best to rotate out old stock (1). This wouldn't exactly be worth mentioning except for the fact that on deep reduction this post-holiday season are some truly inspired bits of Zany Japanese foodstuffs:

   AFTERNOON TEA:THE PUNGENCY. IN THEATERS THIS WINTER. 

Readers who recall my flirtation with Boss Coffee will not be surprised to learn that premixed black tea beverages (2)  are likewise a regular vending machine fixture in Japan-- Kirin's "午後の紅茶/gogo no kōcha/ 'Afternoon Tea'" brand being one of the most popular. Apparently ZA PANJENSHĪ (as the helpful katakana pronunciation guide instructs us to speak the name) contains twice the tea leaves of regular Afternoon brand-- and 100% more English-Induced Cool.  I was on the point of buying a can against my better judgment (3) when I found another winner only a little further down the aisle:

If one needed further proof of the weird Japanese love-hate relationship with coffee, this stuff would do a fine job. I'll let you know whether the taste lives up to its whopping 28 yen a bottle price tag later...


(1) In order to make room for piles of beans (and related beanlike snack-products) for the mid-winter demon-banishing luck festival  of setsubun, and for chocolates by the pallet for Valentines' Day, which as all good, lonely armchair Orientalists recall, has been reinvented by Japanese chocolate companies as a festival for women to give sweets to their bosses, coworkers, and (if they have any money left), their crushes. 

(2) Generically termed "ミルクティー／milk-tea". 

(3)   I'll never forget the flavor of regular Afternoon Tea, which tastes just like stale Luzianne mixed with a heaping spoonful of Coffee-Mate.