osaki ni shitureishimasu: Atsui Matsuri!

Atsui=hot. Matsuri=festival. You can complete the connection.

There was a festival in Yonago this past weekend. It’s actually called Gaina Matsuri, which translates into Big Festival.

Woke up at 10am, shit-shave-showered and then called Amy: we’re meeting at the usual spot near the barbershop at Ekimae (area in front of the station) around 1:15. Decided to do a little bit exploring myself so I left early for a little bit biking. Ran into another JET group--Adam, Pam, and Manjinder--near the city hall. Mori(sp)-san, the supervisor to these three, was an employee of the city government and knew about this pre-festival kick-off for the city hall employees.

When we got there, the pre-party was already under way. People took turn shouting into the loud speaker, to the people waiting their turn (at the loud speaker) and anyone who cared to listen (which was everybody), who Hai's and Yoshi's at the top of their Lung's. It was just an awesome atmosphere of people getting wasted, in public, and in front of their co-workers and supervisors. You can tell the hierarchy of the city hall just by standing there: the lower ranking workers (mostly younger-looking) were standing around and cheering and shouting without abandon, while the supervisors were sitting down and laying back in the lawn chairs, knocking back sake and spitting watermelon seeds. And of course, the women were standing behind all of this, looking pretty and grinning in their yukata (summer version of kimono, traditional Japanese dress that makes women look like candy-wrapped presents). And just as any top-down hierarchical despotic political systems in human history, revolution is inevitable...

Water from a sake keg (I'm guessing that not even the Japanese are crazy enough to splash sake so liberally) were dispensed with impunity on victims who were literally dragged out of the crowd. Some were dismissed with just a few splashes, some were grabbed by the collar and dunked into the keg (a big, ~20L bucket would be a better description), and some were forced to their knees and choked on pouring beer/sake. Pandemonium! Unfortunately, with the shutter delay that plagues most digital cameras on the market, I was unable to capture these Kodak moments. I did get a under-exposed picture of myself dueling with whom I thought to be the MC of the event:

(I'm so proud of this picture, under-exposed or not)

After this, we headed towards the Yonago City Cultural Exchange Center, 2 blocks away. At this point, with the compounded effect of <5 hrs sleep and 1/2 a can of beer, I was unable to even figure out which 2 blocks I was supposed to cover, and ended up lost with Jen (not Jen from Sakaiminato) and Simona (in a tank-top and soccer shorts that revealed surprisingly little). Eventually we stumbled on our destination.

This "cultural exchange" event turned out to be just another typical sip-and-meet. I was unable to get into the flow, having made up my mind about drinking a minimal amount of alcohol. Talked, correction:listened, a good deal with Kathrine, who had many helpful advices on how to choose and participate in Japanese junior high school clubs. Talked briefly with Ted, who sympathized with my late night. Courtney repeatedly commented on my lethargic status and tried to chipper me up. Talked with Shinji Matsubara, head of the insurance division of city hall (whose name I only remembered because I ran into him at city hall today), who spoke excellent English, good enough to offer me genuine insights on how the TC movie Last Samurai was received and perceived by the Japanese public. Apparently, they really appreciated Hollywood for making an effort to demonstrate the aspects of Japanese culture and philosophy that are superior to their Western counterparts, even though the said demonstration had to be carried out by Tom Cruise, an idealized version of your common-variety whitey, in the movie. Also spoke with a group of Chinese co-workers from Da-Shi (I'm guessing that it is written big-creek, somewhere near Beijing) that came to Japan to learn something about hard drive motors, and another Malaysian guy who came to Japan for the similar reason of learning CD-ROM motors. Spoke Mandarin the whole time, which surely impressed the hell out of anyone who paid attention (only Ted commented on it though) to my 2.05-lingualism (.95 short of tri-lingualism).

Blah blah blah blah and we learned our dance moves for the parade--yes, we had a spot in the parade for Yonaga Gaina Festival down main street!

Rounds of rock paper scissors determined that I was one of the two carrying the banner, an atrocity of an idea in the typhoon wind.

The wind was so strong, my pole broke in half, twice. After that I didn't even make an effort to stretch out the banner so much and just slacked it using my collarbone as the, uh, uh, middle point (can't remember the term)--even then my collarbone still ended up bruised the next day. It was hard work, much harder than anyone behind me was doing banging away on their hacked-up Japanese dance steps. I was so pissed about the whole thing, and only Corinne and Tyler offered any semblance of sympathy. But these guys showed up:

Who basically drove in front of us to block the wind. These guys rock! Considering that the DUI percent in Japan is 0%, just imagine the sacrifices the driver made! The tension started to build, and I started to forget about the pain against my neck and collarbone, we're next in line!