Party Weekend

The nice thing about living in the middle of nowhere in a country where you don't speak the language is that it is ridiculously easy to fall into new experiences. For instance, you might hear your coworkers mention "dance" and "festival" in the same conversation, and all you would have to do is ask if there was a festival nearby and they would take care of the rest--meaning that they would volunteer you to dance in said festival, in front of hundreds of people, with no prior practice with the dance itself.

That's how I ended up in a tiny room, struggling into a yukata (it takes a LOT of work to wear something that is basically just a cotton robe). The problems began with my feet: they were significantly bigger than anyone else's and wouldn't fit into the required decorative slippers (zori). Luckily I'd foreseen this and brought my own geta (wooden clogs of a sort). However, this meant that while everyone else was padding along on thick pieces of foam I was clunking around in big blocks of wood tied loosely onto my toes. The yukata itself doesn't encourage much movement by binding your legs tighter than a sleeping bag, and the wide sash around the waist (obi) is reinforced with cardboard so you can forget about bending any part of your midsection. And this was my dancing uniform.

Luckily the dance was easy; I was able to get it relatively down after a few repetitions, even without any practice. It was all mostly in the hands: in one hand I held a fan, which I was supposed to move in graceful patterns while shuffling my feet forward. The fans had little numbers on them and at the end of the dance our numbers were part of a lottery; I won a box full of absolutely massive purple grapes (and yes, I do intend to eat the skins). It was incredibly fun. I love the Japanese attitude towards celebrations; that is, that everyone should participate regardless of age, status, or skill.

And that attitude was never more fully demonstrated than the next morning, when I went to a sports festival (undokai) at my smallest school. The school only has 8 students total, so the school invited the entire community to take part in the festival. Toothless grandmas and grandpas, bent nearly double from years of toiling in rice fields, ran sprightly relays around the track. Teachers, devoid of their usual suits and somber expressions, pitted their strengths against each other in huge tug-of-wars. The kids showed off their tumbling and unicycle skills. It was nice to be able just joke around and bond with the kids, and the shy ones started to open up as we cheered on their family members and talked about sundry things in a mixture of Japanese and English.

After that I visited the castle in Kaminoyama. It was like all the other castles I've seen in Japan: a single white tower. The rest of the structure is almost always destroyed, whether by paranoid shogun or the ravages of fires and earthquakes. Even the tower is typically a reconstruction. Still--and this should come as a surprise to none of you--the gardens are always superb. I sat at the edge of their pond and watched the obese fish struggle by until the sinking sun and a noisy group of teenagers finally drove me away.

A good weekend all around. :)