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.