Winter

There’s so much to say and so little time to say it—I don’t think I’ve been this busy since finals week in college.  I’d imagined that my social calendar would lighten during the winter, leaving me plenty of time for internet surfing and dubious crafting projects. But the people of this area, fortified by sweetened boiled sake and roasted rice balls, have put on a parade of festivals that have been frankly unbeatable!

Kaminoyama’s Kasedori Festival

Once a year, to thank the nature gods for preventing fires and to encourage them to keep it up, the residents of nearby Kaminoyama get together to dance naked in the snow. 

Well, that’s not strictly accurate: they actually get together to wear massive straw cones that cover them from head to knees (with small eye slits and arm holes as half-hearted nods to practicality), then dance in the snow while people throw ice water at them. A fellow ALT, Isaac, took part and grinned enthusiastically the whole way through the one-footed hopping, partner-whirling, and rhythmic shouting of, “KA! KA! KA!” The rest of us watched just as enthusiastically from the sides, noting the taped man-nipples (to protect from the very real danger of straw chafing) and cheering on Miss Kaminoyama, the chief iced water dispenser.  We sampled some of the aforementioned sweet sake and posed with some samurai, and tried to work out how the traditional straw getups might have practical in any sense. They made their wearers look like the animated brooms from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” portion of Fantasia, if those brooms had liked to hop in unison and shake water off on the unwary.

"Ka! Ka! Cankles!"

The Snow Monsters

There is a mountain nearby called Zao, famous for its resorts and sheer immenseness. But it’s most famous for a unique phenomenon, termed the “snow monsters.” 

Zao gets a lot of wind and a lot a lot of snow. The combination sheaths the trees in a thick coating of snow, obscuring their original shape completely. The results resemble titanic sea anemones, crouched over a barren sea floor.  I first saw them as my friends and I rode a gondola to the peak.  It was such a cold night that we had to scrape the windows with our nails every few minutes to free them from frost.  The gondola swayed in the constant wind, and again I was struck by how cold and darkness transform a landscape into a world as inhospitable as the black spaces between stars. It was impossible to look anywhere but down, and my only comfort was that if we fell I would probably die by knocking myself out on the ceiling long before the gondola finished the long descent to the ground below. My sense of alienation only increased when I saw the first snow monster, lit up from below by white and blue lights; but the fear gave way to fascination.  

There was nothing all that spectacular about the details of that single snow monster—other than the fact that I’d never seen such a tall, tubular snow formation before. But the cumulative effect of all of them was something else entirely. They were glaring white, casting rainbows across their own shadows in a natural prismatic effect.  And they were EVERYWHERE, rising in colonies all across the mountain. If they had really been monsters or animals I would have been terrified at the sheer number; even knowing that they were only frozen evergreens did nothing to diminish the slightly sinister effect of their hunched shapes.  We weren’t allowed to walk through them, restricted to taking pictures from the fringes. But I imagine a stroll through the snow monsters’ ranks would have felt something like walking on a different planet, surrounded by a strange and glaring beauty.

Nakatsugawa Snow Festival

Nakatsugawa is a small village, tucked away in the mountains at the end of a jade river and a slender road. I teach at their combined elementary/middle school, composed of a grand total of 8 students in all.  The people of this village are full of the most “fighting spirit” I’ve yet encountered. During the summer sports festival I watched grandmas in their 80’s run relays. That would have been amazing enough, but these were country women, the end results of lifetimes of hard labor. This meant they were running with their backs at 90 degree angles ; it was easier for them to watch the dirt passing their feet than it was to crane their necks to see where they were going—and yet I am not ashamed to say I think I would have lost to them, had I participated.

As you may have guessed, winter has not fazed these people in the slightest. For their snow festival they constructed five sculptures entirely from snow, each at least 10 feet tall: a shishi (remember the lion/dragon thing from the summer festivals?), a trio of characters from a popular kids show, a rabbit, a temple, and a bear with a fish in its mouth.  Not satisfied with that, they also built a 15-25 ft. tall snow palace and a stage, where my kids performed a traditional dance and all the teachers did a comedy routine (which somehow involved Bill and Hillary Clinton, a song  and dance, and a copious amount of cross-dressing).  There was also a pyramid stocked with giant black tubes for sledding ,and a sacrificial tree strapped with bundles of straw that  later went up in flames as we danced around it. At every turn there was something that have I have never seen before nor ever expect to see again! 

But my favorite part by far was also the least expected: the paper lanterns. These were not the small, practical kind meant to light our way. These were miniature hot air balloons, meant to rise into the sky and drift across the country—and they were made of nothing but heavy paper and glue. The paper had been decorated by my students and fellow teachers. There were tributes to the rabbit (this year’s zodiac) and several bakemono, including Gegege no Kitaro and the kappa. The sheer skill and beauty of it all was breathtaking—that my students, none of which are above 15 years old, were able to create such beautiful art on such a giant scale and then fashion an airtight, viable balloon from the paper is a thought that still leaves me reeling.

The launching was a spectacle I’ll never forget. Some villagers would hold the paper bag carefully while others attached some sort of burning orb to a wire harness at the bottom. The paper slowly bulged with hot air until it was finally released, rising erratically into the night sky until its impressive glow was reduced to a firefly’s.  Lantern after lantern was sent into the rising wind, forming a long string of blazing lights twisting over the snow-covered rice fields. I couldn’t take my eyes from them; I would have not have missed a second of that spectacle for anything. But even as I basked in one of the most blissful states I’ve ever achieved, I was haunted by a recurring thought.

How can I ever leave this?