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Published: December 1st 2008
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Matsuri (Festival) Time!
Mana (Michelle's tutor), Michelle, and I in our festival Hapi coats. Michelle's is a different type because she was to be playing Taiko while we pulled the float she was on. Konnichiwa!
Sorry, I know I'm really slow with posting entries, but I think you'll forgive me after the amazing-ness of the tales I am about to tell. You're gonna love it, I swear!
Sunday (08/30/2008)
This day was the start of a festival in Tsuru called Hasaku-Matsuri. It marks the beginning of fall and is a 2-day festival that we were gonna get to have all sorts of fun in. For this first day we met at a temple to change into the traditional Hapi coats of summer festivals and to drag what is basically a huge float with people playing Taiko sitting in it. That's right. We got to be part of a parade! It was awesome!!!
Michelle (you remember, the girl that I flew here with who also is from UCSD) does Taiko and had joined the group that we were to be pulling around the city on the float (aka a "Dori"). These Doris are serious business, too. They're old, very beautifully decorated, and HEAVY! There were probably a total of 30 people pulling or pushing the Dori and we moved at about the speed of a geriatric turtle, but it was really
Happy in my Hapi
:) Lookin' stylish, I know. fun! We all gave Michelle a hard-time about having to pull her around all day, but we really enjoyed it, even though it was hot and muggy.
Little did we know we would soon get a break from the hot, mugginess in the form of monsoon-worthy rains. By the mid-afternoon it was getting pretty cloudy and during our first Onigiri-eating break it began to rain. The official Dori-pulling Officianados quickly got the floats covered in giant sheets of clear plastic (sort of bubble-wrap like, minus the bubbles) and when our break was over decided that we would pull a little longer since the rain wasn't bad yet. (They should have known better than to tempt the weather if you ask me.) About twenty minutes later it was raining in a way that felt like we were standing under a water fall. After one of the Dori's wheels RAN OVER SOME POOR GUY'S FOOT (ouch!) it was decided that the float could not be controlled well enough in the rain and we would pull it to its resting spot and call it a day.
By this time we were soaked. We might as well have gone swimming in our
Alternate View
The lovely Allison models the back of the Hapi ensemble. It says Tsuru basically, but it's in crazy old-fashioned Japanese. clothes and then ran through a car wash and fallen into a washing-machine. Those of us with cameras were desperately working to protect them during the whole mess and somehow they all came through intact. Before sloshing back to the temple to gather our belongings we were told that there was going to be a huge party/FREE dinner for everyone that evening. We then had about an hour to get back to the apartments, change, and get back to the place for dinner, which was about a half-hour walk. They gave us rides back to our apartments, but we had all of about 15 minutes there before we had to head back out into the rain to go meet the group for dinner. This is about when I decided it was one of the stupidest things I'd ever done to not bring my rain-boots to Tsuru.
After our grueling journey back across town we were wet again, but lots of yummy food awaited us! The rain slowed by the evening and there were fireworks, as well. As we've come to expect every where we go, we were asked to introduce ourselves to the group. (Sort of a side-effect of
At this hour?
They basically just gave out free drinks to anyone in the festival and some of the group lost no time in getting to the free beer. Even though it was barely noon. being such a novelty in a small town.) It was definitely worth it to get to be part of the experience. And it wasn't over yet! The next morning we were to resume our Dori-pulling services for an hour or so and then we were off to be part of another parade!
(09/01/2008)
Thankfully, we awoke to a sunny day and Hapi coats that had (mostly) dried over night. We met up with the group again and pulled for an hour or so. Then it was off to lunch with a bunch of other people in the festival. Lunch was just as much of a feast as the previous night and we all enjoyed it thoroughly, especially since we didn't have to tread through rivers of rain to get there.
After lunch it was off to prepare for what was by far the most awesome experience of the festival, and possibly of my entire trip here. We went to get dressed in the traditional garments of a Shogun's procession. Usually the exchange student girls dress-up as the princess's attendants, while the guys dress as Samurai or Yako (sort-of like a jester), but for some reason this year
The Dori!!!
A wide shot so you can see the big building it's housed-in most of the time. It sits in there all year with three other ones, just waiting for its moment of glory. there were too many girls to have us all be attendants, so three of us got to be SAMURAI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (If you can't tell by all those exclamation points, I thought this was pretty awesome.)
We got real swords. Our shoulders were pointier than a mechanical pencil. We had hats that tied onto our heads. It took about 45 minutes for us to get fully-dressed and we couldn't use the restroom without quite a lot of work afterward. And IT.WAS. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!....!!!!....!!!!..! (Again, sorry, it's just hard to express how exciting it was to get to be a female Samurai.)
Once everyone was ready (it took much longer to get the wigs and make-up and costumes of the two attendants from our group ready), we got ready to walk for a couple hours around the streets of Tsuru in our procession. We had been going to practices to learn how to walk like Samurai(!!!) for a week or so, and we were quite prepared. However, we were not prepared for the sweltering heat! Those outfits were like wearing the warmest clothes you can think of. But it was well worth it. Just look at the pictures. We were hot stuff.
glamour shot
Vanessa and Michelle looking sharp in their Matsuri gear. (Haha...unintentional pun, I promise...) My favorite part of walking like a Samurai is that you're supposed to look serious and keep your hand on your Katanas (swords) at all times. (!!!) So cool!
The funniest part of the whole experience once the parade started was listening to all the Japanese people's reactions to foreign (gasp!) girls (double gasp!) dressed as Samurai. It was quite entertaining because most of them were clearly not expecting us to understand Japanese very well. I must have heard about a thousand "Naze onna?" (Why girls?) and "kakkoi" (cool) comments from the on-lookers. No one seemed upset, just really surprised. Apparently we were on TV all over the place afterward, also. It was weird to walk past the news cameras and have them quite obviously zoom in on me. We were definitely the talk of the town. Overall, an AMAZING experience.
After we transformed back to our everyday selves, we got to go to Robin's host family's home for a feast! They had laid out little tatami mats and tables outside and we were soon devouring yummy BBQ food. Their home is in the heart of Tsuru, and the festival was not far away,
a rival Dori
This was one of the other 2 Doris that would be parading around later in the day. Look how detailed they are! So pretty! so as we finished up eating, we took trips in small groups to get dessert! I got a yummy crape, which Japan is super-good at making, by the way. The festival was really crowded, but it was fun to see Tsuru being so lively. It's normally pretty quiet around here, but not that weekend. They sure no how to throw a festival around here. 😊
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Stephanie Talley
non-member comment
You're so cool Megan. I hope you're having a blast. Oh and did you hear our moms hung out at some scrap book thing? Haha.