obon festival

All of Japan celebrates Obon because the festival has deep Buddhism roots now engrained in mainstream culture. During Obon people visit graves and remember their ancestors by lighting incense, pouring sake on the graves (this is because the people liked sake in life), and giving freshly cut flowers. Most places in Japan make Obon a subdued and personal event including only members of the family. But Nagasaki does things a bit bigger. Obon happens to be the biggest festival in Nagasaki only second to New Years. People parade huge boat looking carts lit with lanterns through the street. Each boat carries the ancestors and recently passed family members and friends. Communities spend months preparing their floats to parade through the streets of Nagasaki. And each time the boat stops, a handful of very loud fireworks are dropped onto the ground. These fireworks are the type that make loud noises but not much light. Believe me, the noise rose to such unbearable decibels that we all had to wear earplugs. I’ll go into more detail about this later.

Careful planning ensured that I could make it to Nagasaki last weekend. And, I just barely made it. I had to go the long way through Sasebo. I chose this route because the Sasebo ferry is walk distance from my house, and because it is one of the cheaper routes to Nagasaki. On the downside, this route takes forever, but on the upside I get to see the beautiful country side. And it was a perfect day for taking the long scenic route. Finally the sun had come out – it has been pretty cloudy most of the time here – and made all the colors intense and vibrant. Reminding me of my high school Coaster days, I loved seeing the sea from my window of the train. It was a good relaxing break before all of the excitement in Nagasaki.

Before I get ahead of myself I should describe the ferry. There were no seats. When I walked inside there were only four sections of carpet elevated from the main aisle. Since I am in Japan, everyone took off their shoes before stepping up onto the carpet. I should have foreseen this event – removal of the shoes – but alas I did not. I had sprinkled a hefty amount of Gold Bond into my shoes in preparation of the hot humid Nagasaki weather. At first I had just sprinkled it in the shoes, but upon further consideration I felt that a bigger more ample amount would prevent foot odor. And those of you who have used Gold Bond know that it is very fine white powder, and in this instance completely covered my feet. Although a great idea to prevent foot odor, it wasn’t such a great idea when confronted with taking off my shoes. I nearly had a panic attack when I saw I had to remove my shoes because they would leave a white powder trail. So I devised a plan. First I pulled out the Japanese hand towel I carry with me at all times and then I stepped out of my shoes but stayed standing on them. My next move was pretty brilliant. I fumbled with my purse and “accidently” dropped it on my feet – oopsies - giving me enough time to quickly whisk away my powered feet. Crisis averted. I managed to avoid a foot power trail onto the burgundy carpeting.

Oddly reminiscent of pictures I have seen of immigrants coming to America, everyone picked a spot on the floor, picked up a complementary blanket and either went to sleep or watched TV. So I followed suit and wedged my way between two Japanese teenagers that had already fallen asleep (we had literally just bored the ferry). Japanese people can fall asleep anywhere! Last time I came to Japan I had the problem of people falling asleep on me riding home on the train. I would have to elbow them, or their head would be resting in my lap. Surprisingly they always woke up right before their stop. Japanese magic. But, to go back to the ferry. The teenagers were asleep next to me and I had barely enough room to spread out my feet while leaning on the wall. Luckily I got a wall spot, however, my feet dangerously were situated next to the head of a mother and son sleeping in the middle section of the carpet. The mother kept looking up at my feet, and I expected that something was wrong with them. So, I checked my feet: fine. Even though there were no traces of white powder she kept looking uncomfortable. So I have no idea if my feet were ugly, if I was in her space, or if it was the fact that I am a foreigner. None the less this made me really uncomfortable. Lesson learned from my ferry experience: don’t put on gold bond, wear socks instead, and be the first one to board the ferry so you can claim territory instead of invading other people’s. Besides my turmoil, we sailed smoothly to Sasebo.

The plan in Nagasaki was to meet up with ALTs from the Nagasaki prefecture and enjoy the Obon festival. Thankfully, Emily – a friend I met at orientation – so kindly allowed me to stay at her place for the night. She boarded so many ALTs for the weekend at her place that we all joked that she was running a mini hostel. Although Emily technically resides in Nagasaki city, her place is more of a suburb. Let me tell you, her area is nice and is without a doubt more affluent than my area in Arikawa. Drum roll…she even has a dryer in her apartment. Surprising, I know, that I am worked up about a dryer, but hardly anyone own a dryer in Japan. Basically, owning a dryer is unheard of, and Emily is the only ALT I know that owns one. Lucky! On the bright side, I am saving electricity. From what I understand her predecessor had a Japanese girl friend who elevated the apartment to a Japanese cleanliness and organizational standard. So, Emily doesn’t really have to do much in terms of cleaning or re-decorating, except for the shower. The shower works and is nice, but it is odd. Cranking a handle is the only way to generate heat. I am not sure how this works, but I do know that it is loud and more complicated that just turning on the faucet. Some areas in Japanese technology are first rate…while other sectors of technology seem to fail to catch up (air-conditioners!).

In total, five guests stayed at her apartment for the two nights I stayed there. It was crowded, but I got to sleep on a futon, and can fall asleep almost anywhere (like a Japanese person) so I was fine.

Walking to school today (10 mins) was so much hotter than usually. All I wanted was to get into the air conditioned teachers room, collapse and complain to other teachers how hot it is. Even though it is hot every day, without fail everyone says, “Atsui ne?,” meaning, “It’s hot right?” To which everyone responds, “hai sugoku atsui yo,” roughly translated, “Yeah, so freakin hot.” Today I expected the same circumstances because usually at school when I walk in through the door I only see maybe five – at most – teachers sitting in their desks. But today EVERYONE was there. Strange. I walked into a meeting, of which I had not been informed of that had clearly been going on since before my start time. I guess they figure I lack the language skills to understand the meeting. True, however, being employed by the school I want to know when teacher events are taking place. My goal is to slowly inform the teachers that I want to be included in these meetings. Nakamura sensei gave me a piece of paper and explained that there are meetings all day, and that I should just use my computer.

Back to Nagasaki. I bought a yukatta which looks like a kimono, but instead of silk it is made of cotton and commonly worn at festivals. Picking one out proved to be difficult! The patterns and the colors are important because the way I see it, a yukatta is a reflection of your personality. Because my yukatta has bright colors and a bold pattern I would say that my yukatta reflects my outgoing and fun nature. Without realizing it, I picked a very islandy looking one and I heightened that aspect by wearing a flower right above one of my ears. So cute, right?
I bought a yukatta – it’s always good to have one living in Japan – mostly because all the ALTs planned to wear yukatta the night of the 15th (the big day of the festival). Traditionally Japanese wear yukatta for festivals, and so we felt that Obon festival gave us an excuse to wear our yukatta and fit in at the festival.

Yeah, we did look cute but we were far from fitting in. Where were the yukattas? As soon as we boarded the bus we realized that no one wore a yukatta. At first I thought that people during Obon – a somber event – don’t wear yukatta. We later learned many people didn’t wear yukatta because they were afraid that it would rain and ruin the cloth. But, we didn’t learn this until the next day. Can’t you imagine how we looked at Obon? Not only were there the six ALTs staying at Emily’s house, but three more girls met up with us so that we could all help each other put on the yukatta. In total, we had a group composed of all foreigners: eight girls all in bright colored yukattas and one guy in a traditional jinbe.

We stood out like a sore thumb. Some of the people couldn’t stop staring, and people started taking pictures of us. Immediately I thought since Obon festival remembers departed souls, we somehow dressed inappropriately. And I felt like I had worn a bright yellow sun dress to a funeral. Like, a good gainjin I decided to roll with the punches and play into the stupid foreigner card. Although people usually wear yukatta at Bon, as I have mentioned the weather played into the decision for most people not to wear a yukatta on this day. Japanese pay very close attention to weather related events and seasons. For instance, if it is winter everyone wears a jacket; temperature is irrelevant to the clothing choice. But, in the case of rain – if there is a slight chance – people don’t want to ruin yukatta so no one wears one. Essentially we stood out because we – like unknowing gaijin – decided to wear our yukatta anyway. What I am trying to explain is that if it had been clear weather we wouldn’t have stood out, but since there was a chance of rain all the Japanese people couldn’t believe we risked wearing our yukatta. But, I am glad we did because I had so much fun!

The boat floats were everywhere. Even throughout the day people began walking their boats through every part of the city on the way toward the downtown area. You couldn’t miss the boats at any time during the day. At every stop people lit the firework, altering everyone in the surrounding area of their presence. During my visit to the Peace Park (the hypocenter of the A-bomb) I couldn’t miss the loud popping noises in the distance, and I caught my first glimpse of the group of matching men in jinbe surrounding the float. Along with the fireworks kids led the procession by banging on a gong. Everyone had a role in each group. A couple people lit fireworks in front and behind the float, some people banged on the gong, and depending on the size of the float an equal amount of men (usually men) lined either side of the float and push the cart forward.

Before I get to ahead of myself, I should talk a bit about the Peace Park and museum. As an American, I feel a certain draw to understand the history (even if it is dark) between Japan and America. Even though I feel a certain personal magnetic pull to visit both A-bomb sites, at the same time I feel a cultural push and expectation to visit the hypocenter of the bomb. I can’t explain my reasoning for this, but I know that other Americans feel the same way. If I ignored the A-bomb site and museum, it is almost like scoffing at and ignoring the horrible events that took place on August 9th at 11:02 A.M. in Nagasaki. When I visit (especially during Obon) I feel like I am giving my respects to all of the lives lost as a result of the A-bomb (around 130,000 people died). But maybe more importantly, by visiting I want to show that I am an advocate of peace, and that I am not afraid to acknowledge the destruction and learn from the personal experiences of bomb survivors.

Unlike Hiroshima, Nagasaki attempted an objective approach. Of course it is almost impossible to achieve this when your city is only one of two in the world destroyed by an atomic bomb, but they were objective considering their fate. Hiroshima tried to question why the bomb had to be dropped on a city, why there had to be a second bomb dropped, why did they drop it against the scientists of the Manhattan project’s wills, why did they choose these specific targets, why weren’t the cities warned prior to the drops,etc. Interestingly Hiroshima made a good point that the choice had personal ties. For instance, one general refused to have a bomb dropped on Kyoto since he spent his honeymoon there. But, Nagasaki left out information like this because arguably that story might not be as concretely true as Hiroshima insists. Instead, Nagasaki focused on personal stories and events, and talked specifically about the stages of the bomb. That is, how hot temperatures rose at certain distances from the hypocenter and how powerful the blast was. Many bottles, roof tiles, and trees showed the bubbling caused by the intense heat. Many stories and personal items filled the museum. Some sections informed museum goers about stages of radiation and showed graphic pictures of skin burned off and keloid scars.

All the pictures of the burn victims almost brought me to tears. Even now when thinking about how many people suffered, upsets me. Perhaps the item that stood out to me the most was a lunch box of a school girl. Displayed under the picture of the girl, this lunch box still had all of the food items intact, but was completely charred. Essentially the lunch box had been preserved like a time capsule and even individual grains of rice could still be seen. Right now I am having a hard time describing how it affected me so deeply. Maybe because I started to think about how unknowingly this school girl sat at her desk thinking about her regular day and how soon (around 11 o’clock) she would finally get some lunch. Of course made this up in my head, but I started thinking about how so many people had no idea what would happen, and how instantaneously some many lives disintegrated. They hadn’t been able to find this girl; the only thing that remained of her on that day was her lunch box with her name engraved on the bottom. It was a piece of her on that day almost perfectly preserved, and a memory that her life had been unknowingly swept away. I hope that explains my jumble of thoughts. I find it so difficult to describe, and so I encourage anyone who gets a chance to visit the Nagasaki A-bomb museum to truly make an effort to understand that peace is necessary so that no A-bomb will be dropped again.

On a lighter note, Obon exceeded my expectations. The atmosphere and excitement truly affected everyone around the festival. All the roads downtown had been shut down for the parade of boats, and in some spots the only lights came from the lanterns on the boats themselves. Tons of people lined the street on both sides and tons of fireworks exploded in the middle of the street. I have never seen as much litter in Japan until the night of Obon. Since people discarded firework box where ever the street was barely visible under the mounds of trash. So strange to see in Japan, but it made it all the more exciting and different than any other Japan experience I have had. Instead of me explaining forever what the floats looked like, look at the pictures for youself (the link is on an older post). Experiencing Obon in Nagasaki was worth it, even though it was expensive!

Planning my trip back didn’t go too well. I had just enough, again, to make it back to Shinkamigoto on the fast boat. Bad decision. Unfortunately the fast boat is not only expensive, but pretty far from my house. I had the idea that I could catch a bus from Taonora (where the boat lands in Shinkamigoto) regardless of the fact that I didn’t look up the schedule. Also, I wore jeans that day – really bad decision in this heat – because someone told me I would need jeans to protect myself from the ground fireworks at Obon. To my disadvantage on this exceptionally hot day, they were my only set of clean clothes. Since I thought I could take a bus back home, wearing jeans didn’t seem too stupid. But, it was. Let me tell you, skinny jeans in humid heat makes for a miserable 1.5 mile hike while carrying duffle bags.

Upon arriving in Taonora I was informed that the last bus of the day just departed ten minutes ago. What to do? Not having enough money for a taxi, I opted to walk in my jeans on this hot hot day all the way back to my house. Carrying my bags I set off in the direction – I hoped – was Arikawa. Thankfully it was, but it took me a good hour and ten minutes to finally reach my destination! And, another problem I faced was figuring out how to get to Nice Buddy later that night for a BBQ they invited me to. I didn’t have anyone’s number from Nice Buddy because I had just gotten my phone on Thursday. But fate was on my side! Thankfully after all my misfortunes of the day, I ran into Natsun – one of the owner of Nice Buddy – on the walk home. If I hadn’t I think I would have collapsed on my bed and not been able to make it all the way to the BBQ. After exchanging numbers and explaining my situation she offered a ride later in the day. Halleluiah!

I won’t go into details of the BBQ, but instead focus on what’s interesting. I ate sheep, goat, sea snail, and beef. Funny, but true, goat kinda tastes like how they smell. Taste wise, I haven’t made up my mind whether I actually liked it or not. And raw goat meat tasted better than when cooked. At first I thought they were playing a trick on my and trying to get me to eat a raw meat that I shouldn’t. So I had them eat the raw goat first. They did, so I did. And it was delicious! Raw goat is tasty, but raw sea snail not so much. I happened to eat some raw sea snail sashimi in Nagasaki. It looked like the multicolored gizzards of a chicken with boogers all over it, and I think it tasted pretty much how it looked. And it was so incredibly slimly I had a hard time handling it with my chopstick. Instead of gracefully placing it in my mouth, I had to scoop it in. In my mouth the booger sack burst open and a flood of extremely mushy cream of wheat textured goo poured out. Delicious. Joking, because seriously it was nasty. Cooked sea snail actually tastes good, but it is just one of those things that shouldn’t be eaten raw. So adding goat and sea snail onto the list of sashimi, I have also added cooked sheep (I have eaten lamb, but full grown is different) onto my new foods list. I really like.
*Hahaha, there is a break between meetings and people started taking about how hot it is, and when the heat will end.

Sheep in Japanese is pronounced jingesukan, which sounds an awful lot like Ghengis Khan the Mongol conqueror. So they kept talking about how we were going to eat Ghengis Khan, and I didn’t understand. And I kept asking why they said we were eating a Mongol. It took forever to explain what I meant, but towards the end of the night everyone started calling the sheep monguru-jin (Mongolian person).

I really like the whole Nice Buddy family! Techan and Natsun have three kids: two girls and one boy. And the girls are interested in talking to Robin and me. I think they want to learn English from us, and I figure that my free English lessons are in exchange for the extra benefits (like dinner) that Nice Buddy has given me. The little boy (8 years old) keeps showing me all the bugs he catches. Here in Japan little boys catch a certain type of beetle. The more you have the cooler you are. Techan keeps calling his soon “hero” because he has so many bugs, and explained that he is a really manly cool little boy for catching these beetles (they are not dangerous) and so they call him a hero for it. I think that they look really nasty, but I am not a huge fan of bugs in general. But, every time I go to Nice Buddy the little boy shows me his beetle collection because he keeps them in a tank like pets. Last time he showed me almost all of the bugs in one of the terrariums had died, and he didn’t seem too upset. I told him all had died, but he assured me that there were live ones at the bottom of the sod. So he dug through the layers of dead beetles and moist sod to prove that in fact live beetles did escape death. Gross.

After my dive on Monday night, Nastun served me dinner at Nice Buddy. I sat there for a good while trying to explain the pronunciation difference between frog and flag. When it comes to pronunciation my linguistic training comes as an advantage.

*Best time ever at work. I went out of the teacher’s lounge to go to the bathroom, and what do I hear but Thriller playing the background. So I went over to investigate and almost all of the third year students were practicing the dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller video! So cool to see all of the students doing this dance. They told me that they are practicing for sports day where they are all going to perform the dance together. Some taught me some of the moves, and I started to join in and practice with them. So much fun!

I’ll write about meeting the mayor tomorrow. I have already written so much!