bioluminescent flagellates

Where to begin?!? Making Japanese friends at Nice Buddy has already heightened my experience here in Shinkamigoto. We went on a boat to a festival in a neighboring island (Wakamatsu) to eat yummy food and have a good time.

So far it really hasn’t rained much…until yesterday! Talk about bad timing. All day it constantly rained, but not too hard until we headed down to Nice Buddy, where the rain really started to pour. But, I came prepared with my awesome rain boots (which saved my life yesterday, thank you mom), a rain coat (thank you Jamie), and an umbrella. I decked myself out in rain gear because after living in Houston I know how to deal with the down pours.

At Nice Buddy we (11 people) piled onto the scuba boat and head toward Wakamatsu. And it was a much faster and more direct trip to Wakamatsu by boat than by car. In a car you have to not only scale mountains, but you have to go over a bridge and then wait in traffic and find a place to park. On a boat, you can head straight there (the quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line), park right on the dock without waiting, have a place to eat, and most importantly you have the best view of the fireworks. All in all, I attribute my amazing experience to the people at Nice Buddy and the boat.

Maybe I was over-prepared, but I didn’t regret my decision to wear the boots after we got to the festival. We had to walk through sticky brown mud to buy some BBQ food (they brought their own sushi –BYOS for short – ). Everyone else had flip flops on, which meant they had to carefully look around at the ground where they walked while I walked through the mud without a care in the world (and dry, mud free feet). Looking around, I felt so bad for all of the girls that had gotten ready with their yukata (light cotton Kimono-ish garment). Some girls had just a tiny towel over their heads to protect them from the rain. But the saddest sight was the entertainer on the big stage. Unfortunately his act included juggling and twirling fire. Only several dedicated audience members huddle near the front of the stage and watched as people with umbrellas tried to keep him and his spinning fire baton dry. And their very dedicated attempts at keeping the show alive could not sustain any audience interest. Poor fire thrower.

We left the main festival mud pit to rejoin the nice buddies, where we ate, drank, joked, and laughed while exchanging cultural tid bits. Japanese people have a very hard time pronouncing many English sounds like [f] [b] [v] [l] [r], stops [p,t,k,b] at the end of a word, the [si] combination in words like [sit]. There are many more, but it was funny to hear Natsun-san say “flip flop” because it sounded more like [rep rop] than any close to “flip flop”. And they can’t pronounce “corn dog” very well (especially because they call a corn dog “America dog”) so corn dog either sounds like [coin dog] or [co dog]. Obviously I want to make our friendship deeper than just saying things in English, but at first it is a good way to break the ice and make everyone laugh. Another really good way to impress Japanese people is knowing bits of J-pop (Japanese pop culture). Such words like KY (kuuki yomenai, can’t read the air, hence “awkward”) and maji de ( oh really???) come in handy because they will usually make someone laugh. Knowing about yumei na hito (famous people) and cartoons like oshiri kajiri mushi (butt biting bug) go a long way to make little kids think that you are cool. And then it opens up the conversation to talk about slang in English.

Enough about language, this was my first festival after all so I might as well talk about it. Especially because some weird things happened that I didn’t expect. I didn’t mention it before, but Robin came along. I asked Nishimura-sensei and then they invited her to come along. So, together we walked back to the festival –it had stopped raining – to see why everyone gathered around the stage. We both didn’t have to strain to see the stage (because everyone is so short) so we were immediately surprised to see…Power Rangers??? NO! GOTO RANGERS! On the stage stood several bad guys surrounded by the “puddy” things (if you haven’t seen Power Rangers they are the lowest ranking and easiest to kill henchmen). One puddy was not child appropriate. He stuffed something bigger than a sock down his costume to give an enlarging effect (although funny because so strange) did not seem okay considering the amount of little kids. Sometimes overtly sexual things in Japan are accepted by the mainstream public.

Enough about “big puddy”. I have to say they did a pretty good job reenacting the whole cheesy Power Ranger getup and choreography. Apparently there are only two Goto Rangers, red and blue, but they kicked some monster butt!! Even when Godzilla showed up in the crowd (who awkwardly lumbered around with escorts, and had to be lifted onto the stage), they were able to defeat him and keep the Goto Islands safe. There was lighting and fog effects that make it seem so real! Not really, but it was entertaining!! Alas, the show couldn’t last forever, and so we walked around the festival.

Commonly at the festivals there are fish catching games. You kneel and a trough filled with fish and in one hand you hold a bowl and in the other you have a small net. The goal is to herd a gold fish into the bowl with the net and scoop it up. Breaking super easily, the net isn’t meant to have any weight put on it. Rather you herd a fish slowly until you can quickly scoop with the bowl. Since I have been wanting a fish, I decided this was a perfectly acceptable way of acquire one. After breaking my first two nets, I caught a fish!! The man also gave me a pity fish that really wasn’t that pretty. Mine –the one I caught – is way cuter. So I named my big gold fish Goto Ranger and the little one Busu-chan (it means ugly thing in Japanese). Now I have to make sure I can keep the fishies alive!

Both Robin and I ran into our students from our respective high schools. So we posed in our most Japanese way and took a picture. Running into them was fantastic because I want them to know I get out and around and I am interested in the community events. The only drawback was that they tried to take advantage of me! One student asked for me to pay for their ice cream. I told them I didn’t have any money – which is true – so they asked Nishimura sensei instead. To my surprise Nishimura sensei gave into their request! Maybe this is a common thing for a sensei to buy the students food or something, but I feel weird doing that. They should be bribing me, not the other way around.

By the time I made it back to the boat –Goto Ranger in tow – the fireworks started. The view from the boat was spectacular. I don’t ever remember fireworks being so loud, so it must have been topographical features amplifying the sound. They went on forever. I thought that since it was a small festival the fireworks wouldn’t be very grand, but Japanese take fireworks very seriously and the display truly was beautiful.

But better than the fireworks was the ride back on the boat where probably thousands of the bioluminescent flagellates (Wikipedia it) illuminated the crests of the waves and the surface of the water. I have never seen anything like it. The water had an eerie turquoise glow anywhere the microscopic organisms had been perturbed. So the wake behind the boat glowed. And I can’t even begin to describe the stars (I just have been able to see them clearly again with glasses) because there were millions and millions that we could see. Without the harsh city light I am used to, the sky looked as clear as I can remember it. The night sparkled above and below me in the boat. And to add to the romantic nature of the night, I saw a falling star. I wish I could find the appropriate words to describe just how beautiful the night was. I can only look forward to more beauty in events to come, especially since Natsun told me that you can see the bioluminescent flagellates (plankton) night diving!!

The biggest congregation of the plankton itself was around the dock of Nice Buddy, and so when we got off of the boat we spent a good ten minutes throwing things into the water to make it glow. I can see how sailors must have thought that spirits lurked in the water. Even though I know the explanation, I still couldn’t help feeling that what we saw was not natural and other worldly. I don’t know how long the bioluminescence lasts in these waters, but I am so glad I got to see it!

First festival: success!

Here is a google map of all the places I've been talking about.