Sukagawa Torch Festival - Taimatsu Akashi


How’s this for a tourist attraction idea, maybe for somewhere kinda off the map, like Adelaide or Newcastle, or somewhere less boring, like Temora…

1. On a Saturday once a year, block off the main road to traffic.

2. Lie several giant, inflammable torches made of wood, straw, rope and reeds down in the main street. (Make sure they are suitably large and heavy – say 10-16m long, 1-2m in diameter and oh, 1-3 tonnes in weight.)

3.
a) Recruit 40-odd people (including foreigners if possible) to carry each torch 4km to the top of a hill.

b) Dress these people in silly headbands or do rags and make them wear bells around their necks and waists.

4. Show them the ridiculous size of the torches they are required to carry. Let them feel the weight of the torch on their shoulders. By now, you will need to give them alcohol (if they haven’t already started drinking of their own accord). Not too much, just 2-3 glasses of sake (or equivalent local moonshine) or so – they do have to carry that bulky torch through the streets of your town, after all, and you don’t want 3 tonnes of torch going through someone’s front window, do you?

5. Assemble your bearers and have them start their journey. At this point, it may also start to rain and become increasingly cold.

6. Give them a rest stop after a kilometre or so. And more sake. Repeat as necessary.

7. Due to the rain, the path to the top of the hill may have become slippery and treacherous. Have your bearers walk up this path regardless.

8. Allow them an hour or so to erect the torch. As the torch approaches 45 degrees from horizontal, prop it up with several flimsy ladders while your bearers rest under it for shelter from the rain.

9. After approximately an hour, the torch will be upright. It may also be pissing down with rain.

10. Give the primary school aged children of the town cauldrons of flaming coals to carry up the hill – just because it looks good and they are expendable.

11. Light the torches. Drink more sake. Watch the senseless flaming destruction. Try to avoid being burned by falling ash, sparks and bits of torch. A good time is had by all (providing that serious injuries and casualties are somehow avoided).

Hey presto, your town is on the map! Repeat yearly, or more often if necessary.

“Self-Defence” Force?

If you are Kim Jong-il, then do not read this! Apparently Japan’s Self-Defence force needs protection from itself. One of it’s submarines collided yesterday with a chemical tanker while trying to surface, because “it could not hear” the presence of the tanker above it. So, apparently sonar is no longer in fashion? Or what about those periscope things? Surely they aren’t just for show?

I hope that the Japanese air defence force does a better job. In recent weeks, I’ve seen and heard plenty of nasty looking fighter jets zooming across the sky, complete with sonic booms. Hopefully their radar and/or vision will enable them to spot any nukes flying across the Sea of Japan…

The Pirate Ship

Despite being several hundred kilometres from the ocean, Shirakawa apparently has some resident pirates. We discovered this when we went out for Liz’s birthday to a place called the Pirate Ship.

There didn’t seem to be too much pirate – type food around (although this is probably a good thing, given that I’m not a huge fan of salt beef, ship’s biscuits and sauerkraut). Instead there was lots of fried food. On sticks. Including several types of cheese. Weird. But very Japanese.

There was however, plentiful booze and inevitably, everyone got drunk. Almost as inevitable was the savage bashing I received, (with bruises on my arm to prove it – thankfully these have since faded, though the painful memories linger). You may also be unsurprised to read that this bashing was courtesy of a member of the fairer sex.

As these pictures show, it appeared that everyone had a good time. Especially Timmy. Doesn’t he look like a special boy on his day out. (Perhaps somebody mentioned the Cleveland steamer, which understandably sent him into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Who knows.)

The plan after dinner was to head to karaoke. But none of us were in a state to wait an hour for a room to become available so we headed to the “Yakuza pub” next door, where some of the boys tried out their Japanese on some local girls. Sadly, all of the girls said that they already had boyfriends…

Bunkasai

Each year, junior high schools all over Japan have a “school festival” – known as Bunkasai in Japanese. At first I thought that this would be similar to a fete or carnival, with fairy floss, dodgem cars and toffee apples. Then I remembered that I was in Japan, and changed the fairy floss to dried squid, and toffee apples to grilled fish on a stick. It seems that cultural differences run deeper than just foodstuffs though.

The students had been telling me for weeks beforehand how excited they were about the school festival. And it did start out promisingly. So how exactly did a celebration of students’ achievements turn into a grindingly boring Saturday spent at school? Well, let me tell you.

You may think that this is another of Damien’s uncharitable blog posts about Japan because he’s had a bad day etc, but many of the other teachers told me that they also found it excruciatingly boring and I saw a good number of them falling asleep during the proceedings.

In order to prevent this blog post from following in the footsteps of the Bunkasai, I have prepared a synopsis:

- In Japanese style there was an opening ceremony for the opening ceremony

- Then the opening ceremony

- Then the closing of the opening ceremony

- A rousing recitation of the slogan for the festival “Let’s SHINING!”

- Some awesome taiko (Japanese drum) performances

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- Snooze in chair

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- Get up on pretence of going to the bathroom, just to stretch legs

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- 15 minute lunch break (during which I noticed that ALL the other teachers had been supplied with lunch, yours truly being the only exception)

- Choral recitation

- Choral recitation

- Contemplate faking angina, but conclude that it would probably go unnoticed

- Choral recitation

- etc

Not exactly the event of the year. I’m told that the students enjoyed themselves though. I guess they appreciate tests of endurance more than I do. In any case, I have included some pictures of work that the students did in preparation for the festival. There is also some calligraphy that I drew. It says “genki”, which means energetic or high-spirited.

The 8^th grade students had to compose a piece of writing with the theme “My Dream”. My favourite is as follows:

I want be wife

It is a secret!!!

I can’t say who gets marry with me

Drem$ come true!!

About four other girls copied this idea. Another couple of favourites:

I want to be a bank clerk

I want count money

I like money

And

I want to be a rich person

I want to live easily

I want to be lazy

Damien "Sings"! Karaoke...

By popular demand! For your listening and viewing...uh...enjoyment? Perhaps for the deaf and blind, anyway... ENJOY!

Excursion Along Route 118
"That's not Japan!" Oh, yes it is. You just can't see the 5km tailbacks, overtaking on blind corners and 30km/h average speeds. Where else in the developed world can a 95km trip take 3 hours?
Leaves changing colour: a novel concept for an Aussie boy. And 120 million Japanese, it seems.

Yes, I really am that pale. Yes I am an Aussie. And yes, we do have sun in our fair land. It's just that my pasty English complexion doesn't react well to it.

 

Juck Fapan

Don't you hate it when you have one of those days?
You know the ones...
- Where you go to work and cheerily wish everyone good morning, and not a SINGLE person replies?
- When one of your work colleagues is giving out presents from a trip they've been on and gives one to every person in the room, EXCEPT you?
- When you hear your name mentioned in a conversation, so you turn around to find that your colleagues are talking and laughing about you, not with you.
- When you go in to work on a Saturday and at lunch time find that lunch has been bought for everyone EXCEPT you?

If you don't have days like this, chances are that you aren't a foreigner working in Japan. They don't happen everyday, but when they do happen you just want to scream "JUCK FAPAN!"