Best Festival Ever

We went to the Pirate ‘n’ Fire Festival on the nearby island of Innoshima last night, and all agreed that it was our best festival to date, even edging out the award-winning Naked Man festival, for the simple reason that rather than just having lots of people dancing around (as in the Yassa Matsuri) or a long line of stalls stretched along a street for no particular reason (like the Shinmei-ichi festival), this one actually had a sense of purpose to it.

It turns out that Innoshima used be a stronghold of pirates operating in the Seto Inland Sea area. There is a castle on the island and a pirate museum and so on, and the three-day pirate festival is held every summer to commemorate the island’s pirate history. (And bring in much-needed tourist revenue, ahem.)

This time our planning was impeccable. We caught the ferry over in the afternoon (a road trip via Onomichi would have been quicker but Eleni loves taking the ferry; she’s got a thing about ferries). On the ferry our resident teenager was very grumpy so I took a photo of her:

I actually think she looks better grumpy.

On Innoshima, we were careful to park our car near the exit of the carpark so as not to get caught in the mad rush at the end as happened after the Yassa Matsuri fireworks. The event itself was held on the very fine local beach (Note: must go back some day soon for a swim) which provided a great setting with heaps of seating so everyone could sit and watch without getting squashed, which was nice for a change.

When we got there the bonfires were already set up on the beach and there was lots of loud banging going on which turned out to be men dressed in ancient traditional cultural armor firing off ancient muskets or blunderbusses or whatever they’re called. I’ve heard that these are notoriously unstable and can blow up in your face but there were no unseemly incidents other than the guns occasionally failing to fire on cue. They made a tremendous noise and flash of light when they went off, which I’m sure would have been enough to give the enemy pause for thought regardless of where the bullet ended up.

On the left in the above photo you can see the massive torch thingy that gets set alight at the end of the night, and on the right is one of the many bonfires that were dotted along the beach.

After that there was an endless succession of dance numbers put on by local schools and community groups and so on and this was possibly more fun for the participants than the spectators but it gave us a chance to wander around and check out the festival stalls. Then there was a wadaiko drumming display which was once again a joy to watch. Eleni and I are now completely smitten by traditional drumming (her from a professional perspective, him as a student not a tourist) and can’t get enough of it. That and fireworks. Oh, and okonomiyaki too.

By about seven o’clock dark had fallen (there being no daylight saving in Japan) and it was time for the main event, which involved the ancient traditional cultural soldier dudes returning with Indiana Jones style flaming torches and setting fire to the very large torch that had been brought over and placed in centre stage.

Then a whole lot more people armed with flaming torches arrived by boat (including a party of foreign students dressed up for the occasion) and were welcomed on shore; by the end there must have been about a hundred of them all waving their fire around the place.

Earlier in the evening I’d seen some of the Young Foreign Things drinking very determinedly and I was a bit worried about them being given a huge ball of fire to look after but no-one seemed to get burnt.

All the while there was a commentary going on which added to the sense of occasion and was no doubt very meaningful and historical to the locals, but unfortunately my Japanese vocabulary is sadly lacking when it comes to history so I couldn’t really work out what it all meant.

At the end of the night there was the inevitable fireworks display. Although advertised as “only” 1,400 fireworks it went on for ages and some of them were very fancy. Felix was most impressed. However in a bid to avoid the madding crowds we had to get on the shuttle bus back to the carpark while the fireworks show was still in progress but this created a cultural bonding atmosphere of camaraderie on the crowded bus as everybody craned their necks to get a good view of the fireworks display from the bus windows.

And to top it all off, we exited the carpark in style and encountered no traffic whatsoever on the way home.

So all in all it was a really great festival experience and we’re determined to go again in 2011. Hopefully we’ll be even more organised and catch the full-on pirate parade and boat race too.

Click here for more festival photos.