Christeph: On the Lam

I haven’t seen the sun for a good ten days, and it’s making me a bit twitchy. In the midst of all this wet and gloom, imagine my surprise when a teacher burst into the staff room and asked me in a panic if anything was wet. One eyebrow raised, I followed her into the corridor, where drip drip dripping could be heard soaking through the ceiling onto the linoleum floor. Peering further down the hallway, I was astonished to see sheets of water pouring down flights of stairs. Leaky roof? No, a pipe had spontaneously burst on the fourth floor.

At this point, the individuals who had been milling around school aimlessly during summer vacation burst into action. Everyone manned themselves with old mops, buckets, and squeegees. Each tool by itself was pretty ineffective… old ratty mops and dustpans… but when used together in a sort of fireman’s brigade of pushing water across the floor, and into the public bathrooms, where we could trap the excess water, we were able to make progress. Water-sucking vacuums were brought in to pipe the water outside, where students gleefully turned the exhaust hose on each other.

Face to face, working with my Japanese colleague in the hall, he stopped for a moment, considered the water cascading from floor to floor down the stairwell and cheekily informed me in English: “summer festival”. Indeed.

Little did he know that he was talking to a festival whore. I will travel anywhere at anytime no matter what the distance if you whisper one little word into my ears: matsuri. This is how I was seduced into traveling about 2 hours southeast to Ani-Maeda (literally, the rice field just before the town of Ani) on a school night to see a Tanabata festival.

Tanabata is a celebration held either on July 7 or August 7, depending on where you live in Japan. This festival celebrates the one day a year when two star crossed lovers can meet, and is a time to make wishes. Each region seems to celebrate this festival in a different way. Noshiro celebrates by hauling fish-shaped floats throughout town, and burning them on the river. Akita City celebrates the season by toting huge fiery representations of rice up and down the street. Ani-Maeda celebrates Tanabata by setting everything on fire.

We arrived to find the usual complement of festival food: onigiri, yakisoba, cotton candy… and an unusual amount of ほるもん (intestines) and 馬肉 (horsemeat). What we didn’t expect was to see our favorite chef from Noshiro… who recognized us instantly, came over to greet us warmly, and drunkenly presented us with 5 ears of cooked corn. Such are the quirks of life in the Japanese countryside.

Shortly after we were presented with the bounty of corn, a procession of floats marched past the food stalls, and wound its way down to the river front. The floats were a bit rickety, clearly handmade by local artisans. Each float was followed by a small contingent of drum and flute players, each with their own tune, so that as the floats passed you by, one rhythm would morph awkwardly into the next.

We were adopted by a group of friendly folk. Before the big show, they waved us over, and magically produced seating for all 6 of us, effectively doubling the size of their party. As the light waned, everyone sat down on one side of the river on the edge of town. Facing the opposing bank as night fell, torches lit up one by one appeared in the darkness, streaking in lines across our field of view. Moments later, fireworks burst from these strings of lights, and only then did I realize that the lines of torches created 3 volcanoes, which had all started exploding.

The festival proceeded at a leisurely pace. Between firework displays, we watched kanji slowly appear across the river in fiery strokes as all the necessary lanterns were lit by hand. A taiko group played through the night. Strings of fireworks were lit from the bridge and dripped off brilliantly into the water below.

A zip line had also been set up from a nearby hill, in order to send fiery images plummeting into the river. Skiers made of fire, a tribute to the ski area nearby, flew through the air, only to be extinguished below. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw an airplane on fire soar through the air, and extinguish itself in the river. This was supposedly a tribute to the nearby airport, which was recently completed… though I have to say I kind of got mixed messages about the safety of air travel from the display.

I’m looking forward to the few remaining weeks of festival season, when I’ll be running like a madman all over the ken, trying to catch as many events as possible before we sink from the hot sticky lethargy of summer into the crisp golden air of autumn.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Festivals and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.