I haven't posted in a while, partially because I'm a slacker and also because I haven't gotten any photos I thought worth editing. So here I am about 1/2 hr. before bed and I thought I'd update some stuff.
Starting on Friday the highlights include:
Its festival season (Oct. mostly and maybe a bit o' Nov.), so I headed over to Innami-cho for their local matsuri. A matsuri is a harvest festival typically where men [only] (ain't Japan great) lift portable shrines. The shrines can be literally multiple tons and in someplaces fatalities occur almost every year. The fest in Innami was pretty small. These shrines couldn't have weighed more than 1000lbs. I did almost see an old lady flattened as they lost control of one of the shrines. Did I mention this is usually done by DRUNKEN men..(the worst kind of fool). One of my favorites is the one in Mihama. The shirnes are huge and have two children riding in the top playing drums while the men juggle the shrine. I never once saw a look of terror on a childs face even when the men nearly tipped the shrines over.
good stuff.
The next day I went to the kue fair (the matsuri was on sunday so I had to miss it). My highlight was chilling with some of my elementry kids listening to a singer from the city and doing Mochimaki with the locals. Mochi is like an uncooked/risen hunk of bread (made with rice flour) and it is plain but in a tasty sort of way. Mochimaki is where people line up and other people have hundreds of small mochi "throwing" donuts that they whip into the crowd of people. I played this one last year and took a few shots to the soup kitchen. Its a rough game and you've always got to watch out for grannys and kid tag teams. One hits you high the other hits you low..vicious.
These are all elementry school kids at Hii the smallest of my schools. Classes are typically not bigger than 10 kids. Japanese are so photogenic is makes me gag
a monster on one of the portable shrines. Looks like a devil or an ogre. These shrines didn't look like the kind that are picked up, but wheeled around. Just as dangerous, trust me.
Some paper lanterns attached to the shrine.
"My friend" Who gave me a kai. Kai is a whole scallope. Not like the cute little buttons that we eat (and love) in the states, but all the guts, and glands and crap fresh out of the water and only mildly warmed with fire. It was the only thing to date in Japan that I couldn't force myself to put down. Felt so bad to (for about .000043 seconds) since this guy was so nice to offer me a beer and this nasty crap to eat.
Finally today, I had my kendo test. After nearly 10 years of studying aikido I am still only a 3rd kyu (still light years away from a blackbelt), after 1 1/12 years I am now a blackbelt in kendo. That seem wrong on so many levels. On the other hand it will never diminish the satisfaction I get from planting my stick in some poor bastard's squash.
After that I celebrated at the local kaiten sushi joint where I ate 15 plates of cheap sushi and was stuffed, but still have room for icecream (I am from Wisconsin after all).
Finally I wrapped up the day by making a cellphone case for a monk in Tibet. Sure is a small world huh? I'm sure that will deflect all the bad karma I got for going into KFC.
ciao,
d