This post was suppose to happen a few days ago but I don't think that it ever went up and on to the server so here it is with more stuff. Sorry for the length.
A matsuri is just really a festival. A shinto festival. It was held at the shrine. Shintoism has shrines, with buildings that are small and you don't walk inside of. Buddhism have temples, with buildings you can walk inside of. That is just one way to remember the difference between a temple and shrine. Most places have shrines. Many shrines, anything can be a shinto site, a rock, a tree, a river, a pond... the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes.., even between the land and the ship.
Anywho, this matsuri turned out great. I had been to two practices, but the real thing was on Wednesday and started at the main shrine and they carried a portable shrine to another site with a torii. There they performed a dance and then returned to the main shrine for another play/dance. Present were many shinto priests wearing this cool outfit and a cool huge circle hat that is slightly titled when you wear it. The main priest, priestess in this case, wore a big billowing white outfit with big black clob wooden shoes that you could hear a mile away. The priests performed a ceremony inside the small shrine building while the play/dance went on outside. Two boys taiko-ed(drummed) the whole time. One had blisters on his fingers by the time he was done. The younger children and some adults played a traditional tune bamboo flutes the entire time. The portable taiko set and the flute players followed the portable shrine all through the village on the way to other site.
Now Sougawa is a really cool town. It is completly different than Chicago. It is set in the moutians, and houses, buildings and fields are set into the sides of mountains. Standing in the middle of town you can hear the babbling of the several rivers that flow down out of the mountains and pass through the village. It is kind of like Rivendel from Lord of The Rings, well I sort of think so, well it reminds me of it, but there are no elves, just Japanese people running around.
The day of the matsuri was great. It was warm in the sun, which there was plenty of, except when you were in the shadow of the mountains. I met a lot of people that day, which was Wesnesday. I am starting to notice that a bunch of people are all related somehow or in someway. I don't think that there is imbedding or anything. It is just a small town and some families are big and have been there for like 10 generations or something crazy.
Afterwards were all rendezvoused at the community house and ate sushi from platters and drank sake. I was able to drink sake because a person whom I had met at a previous matsuri practice offered to drive me home. I said ok. I made sure not to get wasted though, which is easy to do on sake. So I busted out some Japanese and had a good time. The nice guy, Okumura-san, then invited me to have dinner at his house. Which was great. I met the family and we watched some of the election on Japanese TV where they gave the Democrates blue and the Republicans red. I already knew a couple of Okumura's kids from the different schools I teach at so they were excited to have me over. It was a good time. He then drove me home and karoked to a band called 'X', who I am now investigating. Apperently 'X' is an old early '90's rock/heavy metal band that had ballads and the lot like our big hair 80s bands. 'X' is/was mega popular.
The next day I taught the junior high kids that 'Yesterday' by the Beatles is a sad song about love. What are most songs about anyways. Well they figured out some of it. Afterwards I went to the nearby city, Gobo for my Japanese lesson with Tetsuji. It was a good lesson, but we also talked about many other things like dreams. And how in dreams where you can't talk or move slowly means that you are stressed out. All of my dreams thus far in Japan have actually taken place in America. I haven't dreamt about Japan since I have been here. I guess subconsiusly I miss home, but not consciously. I don't space out in the middle of the day and start feeling homesick. I actually don't feel home sick. Just lonely at times. I wish had someone to explore Japan with. But I hey I do what I want when I want. So if I want to go fishing tomorrow ok, or go eat a gallon of ice cream while watching Star Wars for 7 hours, ok. I haven't done either. I usually go to Osaka, which costs $70 round trip on the train.
Tomorrow I think I might get a hair cut. I took some pictures of my hair just after a hair cut before I left, so it should be ok. The barber is my next door neighbor who doesn't know any English.
Today the Star Wars Episode III trailer came out. I am not able to download it so if someone wants to send me a copy that would be great. Please do. I have the poster though. The poster is alright. I think that AOTC teaser poster was better, IMHO.
Today I went to the wrong elementry school in the morning. They laughed at me. I was like whatever. I then drove out to the Sougawa elementry school. I taught my lessons. They kids couldn't tell 'Z' from 'F' so I have a lot of work to do with them. I almost started to bang my head against the blackboard. Then they wanted me to run a couple kilometers on the narrow ass roads with trucks driving by. Well the kids did it, I didn't I just supported them. Clapping and yelling Ganbare.
Oh and another dog story. So yesterday as I was being driven back to my car in Sougawa we first stopped at this construction site. Typhoon 6 in June had created a flood the blew apart part of this road. So they were digging it out and going to fill it up with concrete. The Japanese really know how to fix things. Anywho, we turned onto this narrow bridge, narrow one-lane. In the middle of the bridge was a dog. I wondered what the driver was going to do. Well he jsut kept driving. I was like ok.... And the dog then started to run away from us, of course... but not quick enough. He was running ahead of us and kept looking back at us. No we didn't hit it, but almost, what really happened is that the dog almost jumped off the bridge. He jumped to the side and nearly lost balance and would have fallen but didn't. Everyone laughed. The dog almost shit a brick though. A minute later there was another dog in the middle of the road, not on a bridge. He cleared us, and was carrying a dead baby monkey in his mouth. A baby monkey in a dog's mouth. You don't see that in Chicago everyday. It might have been a wild dog too.
In the news there is a sad sad story. It is in the papers and TV everyday. A big story. Remember last week there was that major earthquake way up north? Well there was a car on a mountain road that got pummeled by a rock slide. In the car was a mother and her two children, a 3 year old girl and a 2 year old boy, Yota. Three days after the earthquake rescue workers found the car. Three days. In the car the found the daughter and boy still alive. The mother had passed away already. It took awhile, but they were able to save the boy. He had been in the car for four days by the time he was saved. A two year old survived for four days between a rock and twisted metal from the car. Incredible. It has been a heroic story. They were unable to save the girl though. Yota, the boy, is fine and has been quoted as even saying 'we have to fix the car, it is broken.' When they show images on TV of Yota's rescue and him in the hospital they play really sad dramatic music. It almost makes you cry, almost. They sometimes play it in slow motion too. They play dramatic music during a lot of stories on the news that really gets to you.
Oh there they go again. This guy gave a whole bunch of hand made backbacks to some elementry school childern that had most of their stuff destroyed in Typhoon 23. They showed him giving the backpacks to the children and they were all smiling and happy and they were playing really sad piano music.
And I have been told by three different people, that if I really want to learn Japanese, that I need to get a Japanese girlfriend. Looks like that it's true too. I have met two other JET people who have Japanese girlfriends and can speak Japanese very well.
Chicago, I have seen Chicago printed on many shirts and sweatshirts all over the place. When it is on someone that I sort of know I am like "hey hey, Chicago, nice." They look all puzzled and I point at their shirt and they are like 'oh' I say 'Chicago-de.' They just see it has part of English gibberish that is splattered all over shirts and stuff to make them cooler looking. Even though Chicago is really shikagu, Algoquian for smelly river, and not English.
The bells to signal the end or beginning of a period are not bells. They are actually just a scale of a xylophone, well I think that is what it is, I am no maestro. Bing, bong, bong, bong. So when the kids at the elementry schools try and tell me that there is no time, because my class always goes over, they imitate the sounds by saying, 'king, kang, kong' or something like that. It cracks me up. Well I guess you just have to be here to experience it. At Sougawa elementry school they play this really cool Harry Potter jingle. I swear it is from Harry Potter. It's pretty cool.
