Weekend wrap

Another weekend, another festival, ho hum. Actually this one was rather good. It was put on by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the major employers in the fine city of Mihara. MHI occupies an enormous space down at the river mouth, about 2 km long by 1 km wide I reckon, and presumably back in its heyday this was covered in factories that kept the entire city fed and clothed. These days there are only a few factories left where they still manage to produce sexy things such as new trains that get shipped all over the world, plus tons of empty space filled with straggly trees and bits of rusting old metal. But down one end there is a large baseball field, and this was the location of the festival.

I have to say it was rather nice to have all the stalls spread out on a big field rather than lined up along the street (as in the Shinmeichi festival) or jammed in by the river bank (as in the Yassa Matsuri fireworks). We took Felix’s new best friend Shigeta along and the five of us split up and had a nice time wandering freely among the stalls. Since it was a company event there were heaps of stalls put on by various departments at MHI: thus we had the Administration Division selling drinks, the Air Traffic Control Instrumentation Department doing yaki-soba, the Small Machinery Design and Development Division on fried prawns and so forth. Which I thought added a nice touch.

Plus they had a massive stage down one end with the MHI Employees Brass Band playing (I was rather excited to see this given my newfound interest in brass band music) and an entertainer and whatnot. And at the end of the night, what else but fireworks. Only ten minutes this time (MHI has fallen on hard times recently) but pretty impressive nonetheless. This time we cleverly went back and got our car out first and then watched the fireworks from the road so as to avoid being stuck in an almighty traffic jam like last time. Sort of defeats the purpose a bit, since the show was half hidden by the trees, but it was indeed a lovely feeling to arrive home five minutes after it finished.

Eight o’clock on Sunday morning was the annual clean-up day at the primary school. Japanese schools don’t seem to have cleaners: the kids do all the wiping and dusting and sweeping for 20 minutes every day after lunch. Even the annual clean-up is a community event where all the parents and kids are expected to turn up during the summer holidays and spent half a day in the blistering heat scrubbing down the walls and floors. The notice said that it was great way to meet up and socialize with other families. (Aren’t there better ways to do this? I say let’s all chip in and hire some professionals and we can go to the beach together.)

Anyway luckily Eleni hurt her back which gave us an excellent excuse to pike. I feel quite bad about this actually — we really should be doing our bit to contribute rather than making more work for everybody else — but I’m still having trouble getting used to all the ridiculous demands of the schools during the holiday period that isn’t. Ruby’s school also has a clean-up day next Sunday, also at 8 a.m., and Eleni’s back is likely to be better by then but we’ve already said we’ll be away. Yes, I know, I know. Next year I promise to do better. In any case Ruby has a soccer match and Felix and I will be at brass band rehearsal.

Back to the weekend wrap: on Sunday Ruby’s soccer team (the Mihara one, not the Hiroshima Sanfrecce one) organised a Gala Day involving four teams playing friendly matches. The weather was 36 degrees (and did I mention that the humidity makes it feel even hotter?) but the Japanese are made of tough stuff and there was never any doubt that it would go ahead. I went along too and can confirm that it was exhausting just watching, let alone running around. However Ruby acquitted herself very well for a pathetic foreigner and she in fact said that it wasn’t that bad once you got going. Leave that stuff to the kids I say, it was hot enough in the tent.

On the festival front, next Saturday is the annual Pirates ‘n’ Fire Festival on the nearby island of Innoshima, which should be a bit of fun. And on the heat ‘n’ humidity front, we finally capitulated and purchased a second air conditioner for the downstairs rooms. Due to the backlog of demand it doesn’t arrive until next Tuesday but we’re counting down the days. Since we’re only here for two years we’d been trying to avoid spending the money but in the end the heat just got the better of us. Eleni justified the expense by saying she’ll be able to work more productively in a cool room to pay it off, which I thought was excellent logic. (Actually I couldn’t care less about the logic; I just want to be able to exist in the kitchen without having rivulets of sweat running down my back. And we’ll be able to start cooking again, which is kind of handy.) The summer shows no sign of abating as yet, so although we’ve left our run a tad late we should still be able to get good value out of our new purchase.

And of course it will be massively welcome next summer. Only one more Japanese summer to go, then I swear I’m never doing this again.