As painful as daylight savings can be, it has its benefits.
I’m yet to research what time the sun actually rises (I’m writing this on
Friday sans internet) but it seems to be around 5am. Having reaped the benefits
of the hotel air conditioning in Tokyo it wasn’t so much of a problem, but I am
a stingy individual and refuse to leave my aircon on 24/7 and so at 6.30am when
it’s been light for over an hour, it is HOT. That’s the only explanation I have
as to why my body thinks it ok to ping awake at 6.30 (and when I say ping I
mean grumble, squint at the time on my phone which is currently a glorified
watch due to no contract here yet, and shuffle around with puffy eyes for the
next hour).
U-san came and picked me up (at which point I discovered I
have an adorable sounding door bell), and we went to the bank to set up an
account. Unfortunately my hanko (name stamp) hadn’t arrived yet, which pretty
much meant I couldn’t do anything. I would need a bank account to set up a
phone and internet plan and to have a bank account I would need to “sign”
documents, which involved having a hanko.
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| The Illusive Hanko |
So I sat at the BOE practicing writing my address in Kanji
(one of the staff came over and assured me that one kanji in particular was
really hard and nobody could write it properly).
It was decided that we’d make use of the time and go to
visit my new junior high school and primary school. Which also meant a quick
detour back to my flat to change out of my decidedly casual clothes (nb. The
multiple mentions of how important first impressions are were heeded).
One of the things I have decided I love about being a
quasi-adult in Japan is that everyone gives you their meishi (business card)
which means that if you forget your principals name 2 seconds after he
introduces himself, it’s not the end of the world.
All those lessons we had on self-introductions? Right out
the window. U-san and H-san introduced me so I just nodded and smiled and Yoroshiku onegai-d.
The English teachers were out practicing baseball with their
students and the principal called them off of the field (and by this I mean
brown sandy pitch) to come meet us. A quick visit to my new Primary school and
then it was back to the BOE to discover that my hanko had finally arrived
(thank god)
Having come from a flat of 7 people it’s very strange having
no one to chat to in the evenings.
Back to the bank where I was waved over by an old Jii-chan
(grandad – not impolite to call people that here) who asked where I was from,
explained that he was a previous mayor of Konoura (this took about 5 minutes to
decipher as he mumbled a lot and I think spoke in Akita-ben (dialect)). He then
proceeded to inform me that there were 40million goats in New Zealand and our
largest city Christchurch had 3 million people…
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| Nothing like a couple girls in Yukata to make you feel like a scruffy Gaijin |
U-san drove me to the Nikaho city office where I met a group
of exchange students from Oklahoma and joined them on the bus to the Akita
Kanto festival.
Yuu who helped organise the trip and exchange sat next to me
on the bus “is it ok if I keep asking you questions?” she’s an interpreter so
despite the heat still pressing in, I was feeling a bit more awake with being
able to speak English to her (I forgot how bloody tiring constantly having to
put effort into forming and understanding sentences can be.
Once in Akita city we broke off and went for a coffee with
the other City office workers, followed by a soba place for dinner (and we
discovered that there is a punny reason as to why there is a particular meal
named tanuki soba/udon –Tanuki is a sort of badger dog that roams the country
side-). Yuu veered off from the group again so that she could show me the old castle moat that was full of gorgeous lotus flowers.
Back with the main group was an incredibly genki lady called
Keiko who had known one of my predecessors and is a teacher aid at one of my
schools. One thing that is good about being in a small town is that the women
especially seem to take you under their wing – and their company I feel will be
so important to prevent the ever-impending home sickness.
I was stoked to discover that the city office had actually
bought tickets so that rather than crouching or standing on the footpath, we
were sitting in bleachers down the middle of the road.
EXPLANATION: there are 6 prefectures in the north of Honshu
that each have a large festival. Akita has the kanto festival which involves
huge bamboo posts adorned with lanterns being carried down the street. The participants
balance these on the palm of one hand, their shoulder, their hip and most
impressively – their forehead. Each Kanto weighs about 110 pounds, there is a
medium sized version for teenagers and young adults and the smallest size for
young kids weighs about 5kg.
Yuu explained that the purpose of the festival is to pray
for a bountiful harvest (and in modern days – an excellent advertising event
for companies…). She explained that when you look down the road and see the
many Kanto swaying and glowing with the candle light – it looks like a rice
paddy in summer when they turn gold and sway in the breeze.
The festival started with the participants carrying the
Kanto horizontally down the road behind the floats that had drummers on the
back and groups of people playing wooden flutes walking alongside. Some very
small children carried single lanterns (ever so slightly adorable).
After a few minutes the parade came to a halt, the chanting
began, and the Kanto were lifted. Once the main structure was vertical extra
bamboo posts were added to the main pole to elevate it further, the posts alone
were twice the height of a person and then there was the main section with the
lanterns on top of that.
I had been wondering why on earth there were wires running
along both sides of the street above the seating, but once one of the Kanto
went for a plummet to be stopped only by the wire – the answer became quite
obvious. It was quite spectacular (not to mention a little disconcerting) when
one of them fell, or bumped into another Kanto, the shrieks generally alerted
you to the fact that there was a mishap not far away.
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| Combustion isues |
I had been under the assumption that the lights in the lanters were electric – that was until one of the kids’ ones caught a light. There seemed to be a group of about 4 people per Kanto, who took turns to carry (or rather
– balance ) it and to make a mad dash to help if anything turned ugly. An adult supervised the kids’ Kanto and where some were just too little to hold it steady, others were balancing it on their foreheads with a determination that suggested many hours of practice.
The bus ride back home was a fair bit quieter than on the
way to the festival – that is – after the Japanese students at the back stopped
playing Justin Bieber on their phones and the American teenagers up the front
stopped shrieking in excitement and singing along….
Yuu-san and I got onto the subject of kanji and the meaning
behind them. She said that it can be a bit tough on the kids if their parents
put heaps of effort into their names – I guess it sounds poncy (can think of a
few western names that have a similar effect…). She explained that owls are
seen as good luck in Japan as in Japanese they are called fukurou, kurou meaning to bear a burden, and fu being a negative, implying that the person will not suffer from
hardship. She also said that she had seen a kamoshika
(Japanese goat antelope) in her garden once so I’m pretty pumped for the
potential wildlife viewing while I’m here :3.
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