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Omikoshi
Well folks, it's May 10th on a Sunday. 9:15 a.m. I have been in Japan for 364 days. On most Sundays I'd be looking forward to a relaxing day, studying a little Japanese, renting a video and above all staying out of this abominable heat. Goodness, it is HOT here! However, today is Isesaki's Matsuri festival, when everybody and his or her brother's anna-kyodai crowds onto Homachi-dori the main downtown strip near my apartment.
Beginning around 11:30, street vendors line the side-streets with their goods: the ubiquitous tako-yaki (grilled octopus) and ika (squid); okonomi-yaki (see the previous article on that subject); yaki-soba (noodles grilled with a sweet and spicy sauce); absurdly overpriced yaki-imo (sweet potatoes) and corn-on-the-cob, chocolate-covered bananas on sticks with multicolored confectionary sprinkles; red, green and blue shaved ice or iced drinks, beer, soda; also the normal fare of souveniers: a wide array of flimsy plastic masks, each in the likeness of a well-loved television character (Hello Kitty, the cat with no personality; Doraemon, the blue, mechanical, time-traveling cat; Maneki-neko, the waving cat who graces so many store-fronts saying, "Money, come in!; the omnipresent Daruma (a traditional round doll meant to ward off evil); the Power Rangers or their many arch-enemies; Anpan Man (a superhero made of bread), Shokupan Man (a slice of bread), Karipan Man, their baker, Jamu Ojisan, and friends Dokinchan, Chiisu (cheese), Batakosan (she's butter), and the evil Baikin Man (baikin means bacteria); Mickey Mouse and his insipid entourage; Mifi, Hello Kitty's rabbit friend; their mutual friends, Pingu the penguin, Kangu the kangaroo and the blue Panda; Winnie the Pooh; Mr. Peanut and Atom-man. Booths selling model cars, planes and tanks; posters and t-shirts featuring the latest and most vaccuous pop stars: Kinki Kids; Globe; To Be Continued, X; Speed; Mr. Children ;Luna-Sea ; Mariah Carey; Namie Amuro, Namie Amuro, and more Namie Amuro (the reigning queen of J-Pop); Glay; those prices of J-Pop, SMAP's Kimura Takuya, Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, Inagaki Goro, Nakai Masahiro, Katori Shingo; Matsuda Seiko; Princess Princess; Karen Carpenter; Dreams Come True; Yellow Monkey; B'z; Puffy and more Namie Amuro. Always popular items are lighters with skulls and Smilie faces; Marylin Monroe, James Dean, and Bob Marley; lighters with the words, "FUCK YOU," and "TRENDY" printed boldly, their meaning equally indeterminate; a lighter with a red Canadian maple leaf, one with a green hemp leaf, take your pick. It's all too expensive.
In the street, an endless parade of marching kid bands; a procession of ancient time-travelers from another era, whose main talent seems to be staying alive and upright (Japan now has the highest life expectancy); a series of sturdy wooden roofed "floats" housing children banging thin metal disks as brash as garbage can lids with drumsticks and mallets in cacophonous but syncopated poly-rhythms and every few minutes led by an elderly man blowing insanely on a bandleader's whistle; acrobats performing balancing acts on high ladders; finally, a gang of more than fifteen largely drunken men, wearing happi (colorful festival light jackets), their upper torsos wound in white cloth dangling from the back, all suffering beneath the weight of a large, glitteing shrine (called a "mi-ko-shi"), resting on four thick wooden beams (each heavier than the shrine itself). On these beams stand two or three young women wearing festival shorts, their chests wound in wide bands of white cloth.
The gang weaves achi-kochi (back and forth) or diagonally up the street, every minute or so stopping so that the women can jump down before the men rock the shrine left to right all the time chanting with what Walt Whitman would undoubtedly have called "throaty masculine fervor" or something like that. Then the shrine is lowered, the women step back on board and the mikoshi is carried forward (sometimes backward) no further than another fifteen meters before the ritual is repeated. Behind the gang, a crew of other men follow, throwing water from buckets to relieve all of the oppressive heat, and hoses from store fronts are also used to spray water in a manner both kind and taunting.
Anyhow, carrying one of these things is not my idea of a "good time." Yet, in (I don't even want to look at the clock) an hour and fifty-five minutes I'll be doing just that. After a private class last week, I somehow let one of my students talk me into filling in for her husband who recently had a back injury, probably while practicing carrying mikoshi. I must stop writing now and begin applying layers of sun-block to my pale skin. I keep telling myself, "I am NOT going to burn." Why don't they have this festival in autumn? What can I do to get out of this? I wonder what would happen if I just didn't show up. Maybe I could go late and just slip in at the last minute. No one should have to keep any promises made at an izekai-ya (bar and grill) under the influence of sho-chu or nihonshu-atsukan. Ra have mercy.
I arrived at the meeting place, where I changed my cut-offs for colorful tights about 3 sizes too small. Over this I wore a happi. I removed my shoes and socks and put on "zori" (sandals). I wound around my head, pirate-style, a small white towel to protect my scalp from the blistering sun. Under a large canopy I met the members of the group, and it was here that I first thought to ask just who or what it was that our group was representing. Isesaki is made up of a number of wards or districts. It turned out that everybody in our group came from one of the wards near the center of Isesaki, where about 800 persons live. While being introduced to me, all the men, myself included, began putting down the beers, so that by the time we took our positions beside the mikoshi, we were all fairly innebriated.
The mikoshi was resting on two saw-horses in the center of a side street. Water was being poured from beer bottles onto the lashings, to swell the ropes and make the structure more sturdy. The tension of waiting to get on with this thing was apparent everyone's expression. Then an elder shouted something hoarsely, we all bent down to lift the mikoshi with our shoulders. Being the tallest person there, it took me some time to find a comfortable spot, but soon we all found our places and cadence, and were all soon chanting in unison, bouncing the mikoshi in rhythm to the elders shouts and whistle blows.
We didn't go directly to the main street and the festivities as I'd expected we would. Instead, we carried the mikoshi to the Isesaki jin-ja (temple), about two blocks north and two blocks east, where a Shinto priest wearing a light blue robe spent some time carefully blessing the mikoshi. We stayed there nearly twenty minutes before lifting the mikoshi again and continuing toward Ho-ma-chi Dori. Turning onto Ho-ma-chi we began, with renewed vigor, our chanting. The next thirty minutes are somewhat blurred by the sweat that was pouring down into my eyes. I wasn't wearing my glasses, of course, so mainly I remember a stream of faces passing by on the sidewalks in a runny watercolor mosaic, alot of water being thrown from buckets onto us.
Finally, we reached the halfway point in the main intersection where we summoned our reserve strength to bounce the mikoshi up and down, then to lift it over our heads with a final shout. One Japanese man yelled, "Victory!" Our performance was observed and scrutizied by about 10 judges sitting stolidly in the shade of a canopy aboard a flatbed truck. Our effort duly noted, we moved on down Homachi-dori, cheered on by hundreds of enthusiastic spectators. Three blocks later we turned south onto a side-street and several blocks later we laid down our burden, and then the beer drinking began in earnest. Because Matsuri is a kind of 12th Night, only it's daytime and in the middle of summer. Anything goes. The under-aged 19 year-old members of out mikoshi gang were guzzling whole large bottles of Kirin Lager and Asahi Dry. I suppose they deserved it. In a clever rouse, so he thought, a drunken old man handed our Canadian A.E.T., Jennifer, a beer, and then grabbed her chest, but she set him straight. He seemed really surprised that she hadn't enjoyed it, but apologized, not really meaning it. There was a tense moment, but one of the teenagers fell to his knees, spewing beer and tako-yaki (grilled octopus) onto the playground dirt, everyone had a good laugh, and we returned to a mood of levity and rollicking good times.
The crew asked me if I would to participate next year. People should really not ask for commitments from the intoxicated and fatigued. One is likely to promise to move Mt. Fuji or worse yet, climb it, but that is another story. They say only a fool climbs Mt. Fuji twice, but I think I may have volunteered to carry the mikoshi next year. I'm such an idiot. Anyway, having had enough male-bonding to last me five years, I staggered home and fell asleep (passed out) in my ofuro (bathtub), which I'd had the foresight to fill with cold water that morning before I left, the only smart thing I did that day.
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