Autumn Festival

Autumn Festival

This weekend was a 3 day national holiday, celebrating the end of rice season and the beginning of autumn. Of course, there was a massive, crazy festival and the whole city, including the surrounding areas, came to party hard. I knew it was festival time because the streets were lined with decorations in haste. Almost every road in the whole city, it seemed, had rope hung about from door to door, all along. Each house was connected. On the ropes hung a little piece of cut up paper, something like a mobile. Later, I saw a man on a motorcycle speeding about the city, joining the house and buildings in ropes and hanging these paper dangles’. But, without fail, it rained heavily for about 16 hours the day before the festival and all this work was done in vain, for all that remained was empty rope and splotches of wet paper on the ground.

Sunday morning, I woke up to the sound of Taiko drums, the traditional Japanese drumming style that consists of a booming bass drum, a few mid range toms, and a really high pitched metal “cymbal” or cowbell type item. I was sleeping with my window open, and I was woken by the approaching clamor. I could hear a man sounding off a call, and group repeating a response. It sounds something like this: “yada yada yada yea”.

I looked out my window, and I could see a traditional Japanese float, or dashi, being pulled down the street. The seemed to circle my apartment a few times, continuing with the call and response as I fell in and out of consciousness. After a while, I had enough and I decided to wake up. I had some videos to return, anyway.

I walked through the city (my mama-chari bike has a flat tire) and noticed that everything was decorated. There were lanterns lining the downtown streets, and food carts being set up all around the station. There was a miniature steam locomotive at the train station for the kiddies to ride. Very cute. There was a brass band of elementary school kids playing golden oldies; I stopped to watch and was treated to Frankie Valli’s “cant take my eyes off of you” complete with a standing fanfare from the high brass section. It was excellent. I returned my videos (Dr. House, MD) and went back home to take a nap.

I woke up again at about 3pm. I wandered down by the shrine and was impressed by the amount of food vendors and people that had turned out for the festival of festivals. (If you want the lowdown on Japanese carnie food, please refer to the Koriyama fireworks article). I sauntered around, taking pictures and drinking a beer. There were lots of children, a haunted house, carnie games and lots of people with small, cute dogs. The sun was out, the clouds were gone, my jacket was off; I was happy.

As the sun started to set, the sky became as distinctly Arizona shade of orangish pink. The clouds were fluffy and had dark blue bottoms and Technicolor tops. The sky was clear, a rare sight in hazy, humid Japan, I enjoyed the sunset and took about 150 pictures of a bicycle parking area with the orange pink sky.

After the sun had set and city was still bathed in the pinkish grey of dusk, the floats started amassing in the downtown area. Every 10 minutes, a float was dragged in by a vicious group of children chanters, playing taiko from inside and screaming “yade yade yade ye” or whatever battle cry they had adopted. The floats (or dashi) were pulled onto the strip by the children, made a quick k-turn, and backed up along one side of the street. After a battery of about 15 floats had assembled each one was pushed forward toward the crowd for a kind of encore. They did their best to make as much noise and rile up the crowd. It was at this point that I got up close and personal with the floats as I wandered through the maze of people.

I got to look inside, through the lanterns, and I could see the wide eyed children bashing away on the drums next to stocked coolers and bottles of sake for the adults. It was then I noticed that every male over the age of 20 was drunk and shirtless. They were battling with the children, and it seemed the older the man, the drunker and more crazy he was. In some ways, the colors and sounds of the floats were amazing, but I was truly amazed by how the general public of Japan opened up and let loose. The same old guy I saw grinning and wrestling shirtless on the street was surely the sour faced and suited business man come Monday morning. I was approached my more people attempting to speak English than ever before. It was amazing to see a society transform there entire city, from streets to attitudes just for one festival.

After the encore sound off for each float, I was immediately smashed into the front of one of the floats. I had no idea what was about to happen, but everyone’s eyes were skyward. The women that adorned the top of floats produced boxes of candy and began throwing it into the crowd below. It was like a piñata exploding over the entire downtown strip of a city. I was mauled by insane children (and adults) whipped into a frenzy by the idea of free sugar.

After the candy hand out, the floats marched along the city and continued to cry out “yade yade yade ye” until I was fast asleep. I’m assuming they all eventually made it to the cities larges shrine, where they were parked until…..you guessed it: the same thing repeated the next night. This was, and is, a three day festival. The last chance to party before the cold becomes unbearable and even the most sake riddle business man would shiver at the thought of being shirtless outside at night.

Azuma Kofuji

Hola! Sorry it's been so long! I had a bit of writer's block there for a while...thanks for reading!

Azuma Kofuji

My coworker and I, decided to have some fun this weekend. I suggested we take a day trip to the mountains before everything is covered in 10 feet of snow. We decided on a destination known as Goshiki-numa, the 5 colored lakes. It is near the mountain called Azuma Kofuji, which is, by the way, an active volcano. Very exciting. We decided to meet at the bus station at 9:00am on Sunday in order to catch an early bus.

We met around 8:50, ate some breakfast at a café and bumbled over to the tourist information stand. After about 30 min of chatting through the thick language barrier, we realized that we had missed the early bus (9:10 am). The next bus would leave us with about an hour on the mountain, for $30. Definitely not worth it. We decided that poor planning at a late morning had gotten the best of us. We grimaced, at decided to meet the next day around 8:30. I went home to do laundry and read. Blah.

The next day, we met a bit earlier and didn’t waste any time finding our bus. It was quite easy, and we were soon aboard and making our way skyward. After the bus had departed, we were treated to the obligatory 10 minutes of information spoken over a loud speaker. The driver would trade off with a recording and tell us interesting and indecipherable tidbits about our journey. He was always sure to ask me and my traveling companion if we understood, which we certainly did not. He even went so far as to occasionally pull the bus over on the narrow strip of mountain road and force us to take a picture of some plant or shrine from the window. There were a few times when he would slow the bus considerably, point his finger out the window at a bare patch of dirt, or a shrub, and shout some information at the 6 passengers, always making sure to stare me down in the rearview mirror. He was quite a jolly fellow.

As we climbed higher and higher, my ears popped and the clouds became nearer. Soon it was clear to me that we would have to go through the cloud (officially making it fog). We had only driven about half of the allotted time, so I figured we must drive through and arrive above the cloud line. I was quite excited to picture a world inverted, with clouds below and blue above. I got my hopes up a bit too high.

We got above the first set of clouds and were treated to a brief period of blissfully foggy and surreal scenery. The green fuzz of the mountainside was just beginning to change into its autumn attire. Every here and there were patches of trees with the wildest shades of red orange and yellow I have ever seen. Clouds above and below swirled and changed from misty grey to puffy white, with the occasional break of white sunlight. We climbed a bit more and were soon inside another barrier of clouds….and the bus stopped.

The weather became nasty. It was downright diabolical. Not only did the weather look intimidating, but since we were on living mountain, there was the stench of sulfur vents. On the way up the mountain, we passed a few vents and could see the steam billowing out of the side of the mountain.

I could see that we had stopped near some type of tourist center, but even though the bus was in parking lot, I could barely make out the lights of the door through the fog. I stepped off the bus and was smacked in the face by sideways rain. I didn’t button my poncho and wind instantly blew it up around my face and ears. I was covered in water within seconds; tiny drops of mist and sideways rain. We ran inside and were greeted warmly. We bought a couple hot bottles of tea, sat down, and decided to make a game plan.

There were many factors against us having a good time. We were at the mercy of public transport. There were two busses back down the mountain, one departed in 1 hour, the other in 5 hours. If we missed the last bus, we both wouldn’t make it to work until late the next day. The weather was horrendous. We were both unprepared for such dire conditions.

We decided to have a go at braving the elements and were soon outside. We found ourselves walking on a raised, wooden trail over a marshy swamp dotted with red yellow and green and the occasional deep pool of crystal clear water. With the wind howling and the rain pounding us, I could barely take out my camera for a picture. The visibility was about 30 feet. The surreal colors of the swamp, the alien and terrain, and the awful conditions made me feel like Frodo Baggins. We walked around for about 40 minutes and ran back to the shelter.

We decided to give up. The next bus left in 10 minutes. We ran out to the parking lot and boarded…we exchanged looks of wasted money and wasted effort. Our hopes had been crushed. My camera bag was soaked. We had been on the mountain for an hour and ten minutes.

We sat on the bus as it idled and the heater began to warm my feet. I felt like failure. I could tell my traveling partner felt the same way…we traded a few glances. Suddenly, he was up and talking to the bus driver. He was asking about where the second bus would pick up from. I knew what he was thinking; I was thinking the same thing. We weren’t going to let a little weather ruin our day.

We got off the bus, into the rain with our heads held high. I dropped off my camera bag in the tourist office, which they were happy to watch, cinched up my poncho, and we were off into the mist.

We hiked back through the marsh, over the clear ponds and fuzzy calico grasses. We found a trail head and headed into the storm. I was quite warm, but my comfort was totally dependent on the paper thing poncho I decided to bring along instead of a proper waterproof jacket. Every now and then, it would snag on a tree branch and I would let a little more water in. We made it to a beautiful lake that was almost perfectly round. From our vantage point, we could see across the black water and up into and hill surrounding its other side. The green wall was dotted with bright orange and yellow trees. The clouds swept over the water and gave even the brightest trees a pale shade of grey. It was breathtaking. We hiked on.

We headed off toward a campground. (Sidenote: this being Japan, there was a map on a pedestal at every point that the trail diverged or changed directions. Super safe.) Just before the campground we came to a substantially large log cabin. We knocked, and entered. An old lady greeted us and we asked if they had tea or coffee. She pointed to the stairs that were outside. We stomped up the stair case, removed our shoes and rain gear and entered a nice little bed and breakfast style cabin. It was traditional Japanese, with tatami mats and futons, but also had the flavor of a log cabin in Alaska.

We were greeted by a few other hikers and sat down for some coffee. A furnace glowed away in the center of the room and I attempted to dry my socks and jeans by standing near it. It was fantastically rustic and cozy. An older lady, one of the hikers, spoke surprisingly good English and we ended up chatting with her for about an hour while drying ourselves. Me and my traveling partner decided that we would have to come stay a few nights at this most beautiful of cabins when the weather was a bit better. The going rate was about $80/night which included food. Not bad considering the surroundings and authenticity of the lodging. We said our good-byes and were back in the mist.

The rain had subsided and I was really wishing I had my camera. We made it back to the tourist place/bus stop and ate a hot bowl of soup. My camera bag was safe and sound, with a little note in Japanese taped to it that I’m guessing said “this bag belongs to the tall crazy soaking-wet gaijin”. We bought some gifts for the office coworkers (as is the custom here) and boarded the bus for Fukushima, home sweet (dry) home.

Azuma was indeed threatening us today, but we shall return, hopefully on a beautiful sunny autumn day. I hope to stay overnight in the cabin and I will take a million more pictures to share. As for the 5 colored lakes, they will have to wait for my return. I’m sure they were near, we probably just couldn’t see them through the fog.