After rushing home from school and cramming an overnight backpack, I got on a bus to the train station, got a train, and got to Haramachi (原町) where Mari picked me up, had dinner, and drove us back to her town, Iitate (飯館), for the night. After a sleepless night and a 4:50am village alarm (its a daily thing) as I was about to doze off, we set off for Fukushima City (福島市) at 6:20am, met Billy and friends, and took a train up to Iizaka (飯坂), and thus began festival number one of october 4th...
# 1: Iizaka Festival
Shortly after arriving Iizaka, we got dressed in a happi (tradional festival shirt thing) along with a bunch of other foreigners (JETs and foreign exchange students), posed for photos, and set off with our omikoshi (portable shrine - お神輿) on a parade down the streets of Iizaka. We represented the Iizaka Rotary Club. This omikoshi, small and beautiful, but surprisingly heavy, was mounted on a frame of wooden bars, and was carried around the city for a good four hours, stopping at old-people's homes, hotels, behind other omikishis. the sun was beating down. it was ridiculously hot. the omikoshi was ridiculously heavy, but with me being quite short my shoulders never touched the omikoshi; yet holding it up with my arms was no less painful and tiring. Nonetheless it was fun and very amusing! and i'm sure very amusing for the locals as well, seeing a bunch of foreigners and local japanese tycoons yelling 'WASHOI WASHOI!!' all along the way all around the town. Although beer was provided along the way to ease the distress and pain....
After a good four hours or so of hard labour, we were treated by one of the Rotary men to onsen (温泉) in his massive hotel, and an alcohol & food-filled 2-hour welcome party (this was 3pm). At this point, I was so relaxed and gastronomicly satisfied I almost couldn't bear the thought of having to get up and show up to another festival later in the evening...
#2: Nihonmastu Lantern Festival (二本松提灯祭り)
...but this was so good I wouldn't miss it for the world! A train back to fukushima city, and another train to Nihonmatsu, we found ourselves getting into what was the 3rd largest and 3rd best lantern festival in the whole of Japan. And it was magnificent!! Gosh if this was the 3rd largest what's the largest like!?!?
The streets were packed with people, and as any Japanese festival, lined with stalls selling festival food - yakisoba, takoyaki, yakiniku, toffee apples, chocolate bananas...
and then along came the parade: on each float, a giant omikoshi is mounted on a giant wagon-type vehicle, with a large frame enveloping the omikoshi, and loads of small lanterns hanging from the frame. They were amazingly magnificent, 7 tall and bright mikoshi-floats, manually pulled and pushed by young japanese men, whilst musicians sat inside the wagon playing taikos (big drums) and flutes. It was amazing. A crowd of young japanese teenagers usually followed at the back, yelling "washoi washoi!!" to cheer the mikoshi-bearers on.
It's just mysteriously exciting to see such an old tradition, probably several centuries old, supported by so many young japanese adults & teenagers of the 21st century. It's so easy to generalise 21st century teenagers as simply sofa-hugging, nintendo-engulfed, fashion-seeking leechers of society. It maybe in some cases. But definitely not here. Stereotypes were definitely broken. A 360 year-old century, sustained eagerly by youths of a country considered technologically far far forward than anywhere else. Simply amazing. and beautiful.
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