All Posts from the Culture Category
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Naked Man festival
Now THIS is what I call a festival.
On Saturday night we went up to Kui (like a shortened version of “coo-ee!”), a little township up in the mountains about half an hour away from our place. Kui is where Yusuke’s wife Yoko hails from (and where we bought our car, since her family runs the local car yard Ito Motors).
Yoko was involved in organising the Naked Man festival this year and invited us to come up and have a look.
And what a great festival it was too: semi-naked men running through the streets, lots of water and splashing, massed crowds of onlookers, stalls selling the usual tasty goods, and to finish with a massive all-in brawl by the naked (and now very drunk) men — all in good fun of course.
I wasn’t able to determine the cultural significance of men running around in the freezing cold in nothing but loincloths and I suspect most of the onlookers wouldn’t know either, but the modern Japanese aren’t about to let a bit of cultural ambiguity stand in the way of a good festival.The order of events is as follows: first of all the naked men all assemble at the ancient traditional cultural 7-11 at the bottom (geddit?) end of town.
Then they head up the road chanting and carrying a tub of something on a podium, stopping along the way to drink copious amounts of sake kindly put out by shops and houses en route.
When they get to the river, they all jump in and splash about for a bit, then jump out again five minutes later. Bear in mind that the ambient temperature is something below zero at this stage.
Finally they head up to the local shrine where they hang about in the freezing cold waiting for all the other Naked Men to join them from various other places. Some of them come all the way over from the parallel NM festival at Okayama, about an hour and a half away up the road (which incidentally is documented in the excellent book by Brian Thacker called The Naked Man Festival).
The festival culminates in a massive bunfight whereby a couple of hundred naked men are fighting for a little bit of red stick that is thrown down from above. There’s a reason for this of course; the little red bit of stick is worth about $1000. There was lots of pushing and shoving but nobody got hurt and it was all very cultural.
So we’ll be going back next year for sure, but I reckon I’ll be wearing another couple of layers; it was sooooooo cold up at the shrine. And when I got home, still frozen to the bone, I celebrated with the ultimate luxury: a nice long shower. Because there are no water restrictions in Japan. Yet.
Click here for more photos.
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Shinmei-ichi festival
Last weekend was a local festival at Mihara called Shinmei-ichi or Shinmei for short. I was rather hoping to be confronted by hordes of young Japanese lads with bandannas on beating drums, or perhaps a gilded portable shrine being carried through the streets, but Shinmei-ichi turns out to be a decidedly more low-key affair. The best they could manage was a geisha type playing a shamisen at occasional intervals.
Apparently the festival has something to do with Daruma dolls, of which there was a massive great one down the end of the street up on a tower, although nobody I asked was able to tell me quite what it all means.Basically there was a super long line of fairground stalls such as old-fashioned lucky dips and shooting galleries, stalls selling swap cards and plastic toys, stalls selling all kinds of food and drink, and a haunted house. We had fun wandering up and down the street for a couple of hours with Yusaku and Ayasa.
Here’s some photos to prove it.
Felix scores his very own high-powered rifle at one of the stalls
So many people, so many things to eat
Ruby and Ayasa outside the haunted house, with Yusaku and Felix (light-bulb head) in the foreground.
Note the mask to the left: Man With Germs.
Meanwhile, for those with too much time on their hands, there are more photos on my flickr page.
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Sunrise
On Sunday I got up at five o’clock (makes a change from the normal six o’clock routine I suppose) to go and view the sunrise from a nearby mountain together with my new best friend Mr. Nishihara, the guy I met at the yakitori pub during my first week (see story here).
It was a lovely walk up the mountain, starting in the pitch dark and with the light gradually growing as we made our way up to the top just in time for daybreak. And this is the view we saw from the viewing platform at the top.
When we got there:
Start of sunrise:
A couple of minutes later:
What a great experience. And now I finally have some decent photos for my computer screen and phone wallpaper, so it was all worth it.
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Our first festival
Our first festival
On Sunday, the kids had their first official day of school. But rather than a normal school day, it was the annual Tondo festival, where you welcome in the New Year (a bit late, admittedly) by building a massive bonfire and burning all your ancient traditional cultural New Year bamboo sticks and fronds and bits of paper with New Year’s resolutions written on them.
After the bonfire, the kids had lunch in the tents.
Because Sunami doesn’t have a large public space, the Tondo festival for the local area is held at Sunami Primary School, in combination with the school’s own version. This provides a wonderful opportunity for all the old folk of the district to get together with the kids and teach them stuff that nobody knows how to do any more these days, like pounding and moulding the mochi rice cakes, weaving straw snow shoes and playing with spinning tops. Naturally the new parents in town were only too keen to get amongst the Culture, as you can see here:
The grade sixes were responsible for pounding the mochi too, so Ruby got to have a go:
Once the bonfires died down, we all toasted our rice cakes over the embers on super-long bamboo stakes and shared them with the kids. It was great fun and an excellent way for the kids to get to know their new classmates.
Click here for more photos.
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The adventure begins
The family has been here less than a week but already it’s official: Japan is fully sick.
On Day 1 we went to the local council and did all the applications, then repaired to Mr Donuts for a celebratory morning tea (strictly two doughnuts each). After that we did a quick spin around the shopping centres to pick up some new pants for Gigi—because tracksuit pants are a bad look in pubic, let alone in public in Japan. And we bought a bike for Gigi because one of the shopping centres was having a sale and flogging off brand new bikes for $100. Even though he won’t need a bike for several months at least, it was too hard to resist. Our first week here has been kind of like that.
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Since the kids aren’t at school yet, and since I haven’t got any work on at the moment, and since the house is still lacking in many things, and since Japan is just the best place ever for shopping, you can guess what we’ve been doing all day every day since we got here. The only other thing we’ve done apart from shop, and eat beautiful food, is go religiously to Mr Donuts every day. If you buy enough doughnuts and get enough points, you can trade them in for a very cute little coloured Mr Donuts coffee mug. We have three already, and are angling for a fourth to complete the set. Ruby worked out that each mug is the equivalent of about ¥5000 ($55) worth of doughnuts. I don’t think it would be quite that much, but you get the idea — we like them alot.
Other than shopping and doughnuts we’ve been catching up with our good friends Yusuke and Yoko and their two kids, and on Sunday we even hopped on the ferry and went to the next island and stumbled across a rather nice temple. Here’s the evidence:
Once we get into the school routine things will settle down, but for the moment it’s all about the excitement of discovery. And doughnuts. -
A Japanese weekend
On Friday night, having spent most of the day cleaning the house, I headed out for a bite to eat. I decided to try one of the smaller places near the station area and eventually stumbled on yakitori (grilled chicken) shop. When I went in though, it wasn’t like a normal Japanese restaurant, rather a pokey little place. I started to feel self-conscious and couldn’t interpret the menu. Eventually, having lost my confidence altogether, I asked the guy behind the counter to help me out on something to eat. Whereupon the gentleman next to me immediately pushed over a flask of hot sake saying, “If you want to eat here, son, you have to DRINK!”
It turns out that yakitori places are actually bars in disguise; going out for yakitori is code for going out for a night on the turps.
Though you may speak Japanese, grasshopper, you still have much to learn. (And when Yusuke heard about it, the first thing he said was “so why didn’t you invite me too?” A major cultural faux pas.)
Anyway I soon became Best Friends with the guy next to me, who turns out to be Mr Nishihara (we exchanged business cards—of course—and next month he’s going to take me hiking to watch the sunrise from a nearby mountain) as well as the guy next to him, a Sony consultant visiting from Tokyo. And here’s the proof:
On Saturday morning I introduced myself to the neighbours.
I remember from our time in Tokyo that when you move in to a new apartment, you’re supposed to introduce yourself to the people above (ie upstairs), to the left and to the right. In our case there’s nobody above (in terms of up the hill), only an embankment, so I figured I’d go with across the road (to the left), next door (on the right), and behind (or below, seeing as we’re on such a steep hill).
My first attempt on Thursday night had been an abject failure; nobody was home and I ended up accidentally handing over a gift to the lady two doors down on the right whose house isn’t even visible from here and therefore doesn’t rate. What a waste.
So off I went again on Saturday morning armed with my little pre-prepared bags of ancient traditional cultural tea gifts, and this time met with greater success.
First port of call was Mrs. Hara across the road, a kindly lady of about 60 who I’d bumped into on the street the day before. The goodie bag was duly handed over and there was much bowing and scraping and I think I made a good impression.
Next was Mrs. Masuda behind us, who immediately took me around to visit the leader of our the neighbourhood association, Mrs. Kanda. Neighbourhood associations are big in Japan; everyone is expected to join up and take part in exciting neighbourly activities such as cleaning up the local park, sweeping the streets and making sure that people are putting out their rubbish properly. No, really, I’m sure it’s a great way to foster local community spirit and a collective consciousness that we could all do with a bit more of.
However this created a dilemma in that I ended up giving Mrs. Kanda the gift that I had earmarked for Mrs. Masuda—seeing as you can’t introduce yourself empty-handed—so now I had run out of gifts despite having covered only one of my three key targets.
Mrs. Masuda said she didn’t need a gift but I’m not letting her get away with it that easily; it’s back to the tea shop for more supplies on Monday.
Meanwhile, the people on the right are away at the moment so that reduces the burden slightly.
Then on Saturday evening I went out drinking with Yusuke and young Mr. Kobayashi, who is also the real estate agent who arranged this wonderful house for us.
When you go out drinking in Japan, it appears you must go to at least two places as a bare minimum. On Saturday we managed three, and it would have been four or more had I not started feeling a bit pathetic (the combination of beer, sake, choshu and Japanese plum liqueur may have had something to do with it) and pulled the pin. And because you can still smoke in bars in Japan, my clothes all reeked of smoke when I got home. Just like the good old days!
Things got even better on Sunday: I went skiing in Japan for the first time in 15 years.
Mr. Kobayashi (first name unknown, despite the fact that we’ve been out drinking together) took me along to a ski field about two hours away, with his two kids aged 5 and 6. Unfortunately for Mr. K, he had to spend the day pulling them on the sled up and down the kids’ slope, but I had a wonderful time zooming up and down the daddy slopes unhindered. Once again, though, after just a few hours I was starting to feel my age (the combination of beer, sake etc the previous night may have had something to do with it) and was reduced to standing around minding the kids while Mr. K did a bit of zooming up and down of his own. And on the way back from the ski field, just to cement the Japaneseness of it all, we stopped in at a hot spring to have a communal bath while admiring the views of the snow-covered mountains.
What a great weekend.
After all, how many people can honestly say they’ve seen their real estate agent naked?
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This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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