Dancing, Fireworks, and Wallin!

First off, thanks to Aaron for mentioning that the song I’m hearing at the grocery isn’t actually Eye of the Tiger, but rather “Gonna Fly Now.” Anywho, getting back to random stories… One of the first major cultural experiences I had was heading up to northern Gifu prefecture to Gujo-hachiman for the Bon-odori. Obon is a very important period/festival in the Japanese year because it is the time they believe their ancestor’s spirits return home. One of the ways they welcome the spirits back is with the Bon-odori (The Bon dance). The dances performed and customs change depending on the region of Japan, and this particular city is famous because for 3 nights in a row they literally dance all night long. A group of us JETs made the trip up by train (a good 2.5 hours). The train ride was made a bit more interesting since my friend Rock (also lives in Ogaki, two buildings down from mine) brought what he calls “jungle juice,” which is essentially juice and vodka, but I like the name. Since it is kosher to drink in public, it wasn’t a problem to be passing it around on the train. We were all sitting on the floor anyway since it was crowded. Sitting on a ledge near all of us was some random Japanese girl, who was literally touching up her make-up and fixing her hair for almost the entire train ride. We were in awe (or maybe disgust) that she was able to stare into her compact that long. I’m pretty sure after the first 15 min, you are just pushing your hair back to its original place. Finally, we arrived at the station.

In the summer, Japanese people often wear a yukata (a thin, summer version of the kimono, generally made of cotton) if going to a festival. Thus, a number of JETs in our group were also donning yukata. I had gone shopping for one, but it is hard to find one my size, and the few they had were rather plain and boring, so I decided to wait until next summer to buy one. Once everyone had their yukata on, we headed downtown. When we got there the dancing was in full swing. Everyone danced around a central intersection where a group of people were performing traditional folk songs. Every time they switched song, everyone changed directions (counter-clockwise vs. clockwise around the intersection) and the dance changed as well. This rotating line of people snaked down a few different city blocks. The problem was we needed to get to the other side. Breaking through was a bit different, but we got “inside” the ring of people, which ended up being rather disorienting. It was a “deer in headlights” moment for sure, but it was also very surreal to be at the center with every dancing around you.

After navigating the throng, we perused the food. There was much feasting on festival food-yakisoba (pan fried buckwheat noodles, with meat and veggies) was my choice this time. While waiting for others in our group to hit the bathroom, we ran into a random group of Japanese guys (who were drunk) that decided to try speaking English to us. We humored them and had a nice little conversation. We got group pictures after, and looking back at my photo, I now see that the one dude was flipping the bird…classy. After watching the dancing for a bit, we decided to give it a shot ourselves. The dances were relatively simple, and we caught on after a few minutes of struggling. It was rather fun to and get involved a be a part of the action, although I felt a bit out of place with my lack of a yukata. After we grew tired of dancing, we just found a side street, popped a squat, and chilled for a while. There was a special super early train heading back to civilization at 3:30am, and we were all getting tired, so we decided to grab that. We ran into some other foreigners on the train and ended up telling jokes to pass the time. Eventually I got back around 6:30am or so, and fell soundly asleep.

Now I am going to jump to the night of the fireworks, which after having been cancelled due to rain the first time, got rescheduled for Aug. 16th. A huge group of JETs was going and this was purportedly a pretty massive show. And indeed it was. The show was along the Nagaragawa (a river) in Gifu city and they had fireworks going off from 3 different spots simultaneously at certain times. The beauty in the design of the show is that different technicians were given “time slots” so to speak, so there was incentive for them to try and show off and outdo the other technicians. This also meant the show lasted about 1.5-2 hours, and was amazing the whole way through. They also busted out a green laser light show which looked especially cool as it swept through and reflected off of the lingering smoke from the fireworks. An especially awe-inspiring feat they pulled off was creating a veritable waterfall of sparks. They had a rope strung over the river that was rigged with fireworks. They lit both the ends which set off a daisy chain toward the middle. Eventually all the hanging fireworks were going, creating this wall of showering sparks. This was easily the most impressive fireworks show I’ve ever seen. Fourth of July, eat your heart out.

This was also the first time I had seen my friend Lauren from UW-Madison since I’ve been in Japan. She started JET one year ago and is in Aichi-ken, one of the prefectures neighboring Gifu-ken. She made the trip up to Gifu and so I got to meet a couple of her JET friends as well, Maria (#2) and Matt. It was a ton of fun to see her again and we all gorged ourselves on festival food during the show. I had okonomiyaki (a Japanese style savory griddle cake) and what is essentially a sno-cone. I may have had more, but at this point I was still trying to be relatively frugal and hold out until the first paycheck. The picture just above is, according to Lauren, supposed to show Maria how much fun we're having, and make her jealous. Wow Maria, it must be nice to have such caring friends, eh? On the long walk back to the station, I chatted with Colin (note only one “L”), a fellow CIR working in West Gifu, who is from Ireland. (So is Maria #2, so I was introduced to some Irish slang, such as “What’s the craic?” which basically means “what’s up?” or “how’s it going?”) We talked a bit about work and other random stuff, and he seems like a pretty cool guy (must be something about the name, huh?).

Then that week Wallin visited from Korea (after having just previously been in the Phillipines). At this point, I had been in Ogaki for a whopping 2-3 weeks and didn’t know the area that well. I was still waiting on my first paycheck and Wallin seemed relatively content to explore Ogaki itself in lieu of more touristy stuff, so we just chilled most of the time he was here. We managed to play a little capoeira, which was refreshing, but reminded me it had been a good month and I was getting out of shape. We went bowling one night and hit up our favorite Indian restaurant, Masala Master. Wallin hung out with Lauren on Friday while I was at work. I met up with them later after dinner. For dinner, though, a group of us Seino area (west Gifu Prefecture) JETs went to Coco Ichiban Curry House, which is a massive chain in Japan, to watch our friend Jon, who takes pride in downing the spiciest of spicy foods, try and take down their level 10 spicy curry. We built it up to be this epic event, and pretty much took over the store with our group of 15 or so foreigners. And although it was hot, Jon was pretty much able to take down the whole thing by himself. A few of us, including myself, took a test bite to see just how hot it was. It didn’t completely sear my tongue off, and I was fine after a drink of water, but I wouldn’t want to eat a whole plate of the stuff. After that, I hopped a train to Kanayama (in Nagoya proper) where I was supposed to be meeting Lauren and Wallin who were out for dinner. Well, I ended up waiting over an hour (it was raining, to boot) for their arses to arrive. Apparently they were out with a group, including a couple Japanese people who just wouldn’t shut up/finish their meal. So the night didn’t start off well, and it continued down that path as once they did arrive, we couldn’t get into the bar we wanted because it was at capacity.

Being the resourceful folks we are, and this being Japan we it’s completely fine to drink in public, we headed to the nearest konbini (convenience store) and procured some alcohol. It could’ve been straight from a Jay and Silent Bob film, seeing as we were leaning against the wall drinking outside the MiniStop. Classy, I know. Lauren had a meaningless argument on the phone with her friend who was responsible for the slow eating, and apparently all around unfriendly Japanese folks at dinner, while Wallin and I just laughed at the “drama,” as we could care less. Anyway, we met up with a couple of Lauren’s friends, and finally managed to make it into that bar. It was a British pub theme, and I had some Guiness, which I guess made me feel slightly better about the overall failure of a night. We eventually called it quits and headed back. Wallin left on Sunday around noon, and I killed the rest of the day…somehow. It’s too far back, can’t remember.

In recent news (i.e. today), I now have the internet at my apartment, so updates should be coming more regularly. On the downside, I may very well have ringworm on my knee…might have to get that looked at.