FESTIVAL! gozaimas

Up until now my entries have been a day by day account of my first four days in Japan. If I were to continue this trend there would be some fairly dull days where Phil sat around in his pants for most of the day eating biscuits and then watched a man city game streamed over the internet. Thankfully however after three months I can still count such days on one hand. There’s always something to do, somewhere that needs exploring, a party or a festival that requires an added dose of vitamin Phil.

In my first month I attended 3 utterly amazing festivals. In all three cases I felt that had I been on holiday or even backpacking around Japan would not have rewarded me with the same depth of cultural immersion. The first was Zao Rock, a rock festival near Zao Onsen, a famous hot spring and ski resort in Yamagata, a 3 hour drive from Honjo. I spent the weekend camping and being the king of the Japanese moshpit, at one point I was walking round with a random Japanese man on my shoulders. And they had kebabs! Derishus.

Secondly me and the Honjo MASSIVE ventured east to take in the national fireworks competition at omagari. 750,000 people had come from all over Japan to watch stuff explode. And explode it did. In fact I got so wrapped up in the whole event that I purchased a strange round firework for £40, and a smaller one for £10, and then a bag of them for £15. I love explosions me. Kaboom.

Exhibit 3 is a trip to Kakunodate, a historic samurai town just over an hour from Honjo. This is where I really began to appreciate just how lucky I was to be on the JET programme. I pitched up at about 5pm, and my friend (the local ALT) Maggie gave me a Hanten, a jacket uniform that each member of each different neighbourhood in Kakunodate wore.

Each neighbourhood was towing a wooden float around the streets of the town, using ropes and pulling in unison to move what must have weighed several tons. As I arrived in the jacket of this neighbourhood a man wearing the same came up to me and said ‘HELLO! I am Jari! Have beer!’ whereupon a beer was thrown to me out of the cooler being pushed behind the float.

I was invited to help pull the float round town, and set about doing exactly that. I had drinking contests with the other lads pulling the floats, I nearly got crushed when one of the floats crashed into ours, everyone kept plying me with free beer, chicken and sake, and eventually we parked the float at 4am and stayed up drinking beer with locals until 5. I’ve never been made to feel so welcome as an outsider participating in a native tradition. I love this country.

Stay tuned phor more news phrom the phar east phil phanatics!