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Published: March 15th 2006
The "Zabuton" Collections
The Japanese word for these cushions that they sit on is "zabuton." The crowd voted whether or not they would give us zabuton, or take one away, depending on our answers."Nihon ni itsumade itemo narenai koto wa natto desu. Ooku no hito mo onaji da to omoimasu. dakara, kyowa, natto no kotodewa naku, supu no nomikatta ni tsuite hanashimasu. Ramon o taberu toki, ooki na oto o tatemasu. Kanada dewa, sorewa manaa ga waruii to iwaremasu. Dakara, ramon o taberu toki wa, itsumo oto o tatenaiyou ni tabemasu. Demo, ramon o taberu to, supu ga kaojuu ni chirimasu. Bunka no chigaii to omoimasu!"
And that is how it all started!
This last weekend I went to an island called Etajima (which is just south of Hiroshima City), and took place in an Ogiri. Basically, I sat on a stage with 4 other foreigners and had a room full of 70-100 Japanese people listen to what we thought about Japan.
I was pretty nervous walking onto that stage knowing that I was about to spend the next two hours trying to communicate in Japanese, while being stared at by so many people, but it ended up turning out okay! Actually, way better than I could have expected.
The purpose of an ogiri is to entertain the crowd with your answers, and after you answer, they vote whether to
Saturday Night Out With The Ogiri Participants
Nothing like an "all-you-can-drink" outting the night before your performance! give or take away the "zabuton" (cushions) that you sit on. If everyone in the crowd holds up a green paper, you receive an extra zabuton or two; if it is all yellow papers, you neither receive nor lose a zabuton; and if all papers are red, you are screwed. (Anything in between ...e.g. mixed colored papers... and the judge makes the call.) Anyways, I was extremely lucky in that I started off on a good note, and so there was no point during the ogiri that I actually lost any zabuton. However, the consequences of never losing a zabuton is that by the end of the show, you are sitting on the edge of a stage, on a tall TOWER of cushions which could topple over at any time! It got a little scary at times!
Well, I don't really have much else to say... so I will just post my pictures!
P.S. I won the Ogiri with my 8 zabuton! Yippie!
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Mom
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CONGRATULATIONS! You should have put the "I WON the Ogiri" in Caps!!