Aki Matsuri -- Part Three: The Stops Along the Way

A seven hour walk is a lot shorter than it sounds. At least it is when you're stopping every fifteen to twenty minutes to play music, dance, eat, drink beer or search frantically for a bathroom.

Both Saturday and Sunday everyone met early at the Shrine. The children got their make up done, adjusted their costumes and ran around with their friends. The adults loaded several trucks full of beer, sake, and snacks. Here's a truck being loaded.

The main event is the children doing this: (that's J on the big drum)




They've been going to practices for two months, twice a week to learn to play these instruments/songs and by daggit, by the end of this thing they'll be playing them in their sleep. Heck, by the end of it, I'm playing these songs in my sleep.

As we walk up and down the narrow streets pulling our enormous yatai everyone comes outside to greet us. Invariably someone from each household will slip an envelope into the hand of some dressed-up-happy-dancer and that dressed-up-happy-dancer will deliver it to the guy with the mic. The envelope is filled with money, a little or a lot. Doesn't matter. The fellow with the mic will thank the person. Their name is written on the front.

Some houses do this:

It's kinda difficult to tell but the yatai is coming down the street towards the camera (on the right). On the left is a house where they have set up tables filled with sweets for the kids and salty snacks, beer, and whiskey for the adults. It is getting late in the day and a lot of the men have a nice buzz going. They're very friendly. I was drug into the back and given several cups of whiskey and then had a whoozy old man talk me up about WW2.

So we stop for music, we stop for dance, we stop when a house beckons us or a lady in an apron brings out plates of homemade sushi. And as soon as we stop the guys in the trucks do their jobs. They walk around to all the adults participating or watching and they hand him or her a cup and offer beer or sake. Next comes the guys with the fish cakes or rice crackers. Here's a picture of me as I was watching the little ones dance and was plied with beer.

But don't worry. While the adults are getting beer the kids are getting puddings, ice creams, tea, rice balls, fish cakes and dried squid on sticks. This happens roughly every twenty minutes.

At one point we passed a retirement home. Man, I cried. We have this certain route we gotta walk and because the darned yatai is so big we really can't veer off course. The staff had brought out all the elderly people and line them up, but they were facing the wrong way! So since my job was mostly keeping kids from falling into the river or climbing up fences I ran over and told them where we'd be performing and then helped push a few wheelchairs into a better position.

The residents at the home were so excited about the event that they had made these great big fans with the words Festival (matsuri) on them. Here I talked one woman into posing with one. The cute thing was that they were much too big and heavy for any one to really wave them around.

Here they are clapping along to the song. The lady on the right was really crying. But I think it was happy crying. Or nostalgic crying. At this point I was crying too.

So we stop for music, dance, food, pudding, old people and this! Towards the end of the last day they had a mochi maki and people went wild. Mochi maki is when people toss sticky rice cakes and other goodies out to a crowd. It usually happens at temples/shrines and I heard that out west people do it when they build a new house. Give their new neighbors a reason to like them.

J ended up with a big bag full of treats and me too, actually. By this point I was buddy-buddy with these two old guys. We were sitting on a bench singing, clapping each others' shoulders and hollaring for more beer when they started throwing the goodies. Completely up to the challenge we waded into the crowd and began our own frenzied attempt to collect as many treats as we could. After we had finished for various health reasions they both donated their treats to me.

Not exactly Halloween. But close. Here is some of what we got...

Aki Matsuri -- Part Two: The Procession

We'll do this backwards. The slowest part of the aki matsuri procession is called the yatai. Here is a picture of what a yatai looks like head on. A sort of house on wheels. But better than a house, it has spotlights, a tape recorder, lanterns, speakers, a couple of generators and a single golden phoenix perched on top to boost auspiciousness. Attached to the front are two extremely long ropes. Ropes for pulling.

Here it is from the side. That fellow up top rides there the entire time (a six/seven hour march Saturday and Sunday). He has a whistle that he blows and a large stick that he uses to push aside tree limbs and telephone wires. He also dances when the mood arises. People below keep him generously supplied with beer and sake. The dancing mood arises more and more as the day goes on.

You can't really tell but the inside is covered in straw mats and several drums. Groups of ten kids take turns riding inside rather than doing the pulling/chanting bit.

Pulling/chanting bit, you ask? Anyone and everyone is invited to pull (and I mean that quite literally) the yatai through the streets while flute music blares from the speakers and someone with a microphone encourages us to work harder. Yea, it can get on the pullers' nerves after say six hours of walking up and down narrow streets, but we get our revenge on the turns. Believe me. He he he.

Below is a picture of one of the yatai's wheels. Wood. Occasionally someone run over and pours a bucket of water on each one so they don't just suddenly burst into flames.

The walking wasn't as bad as I thought. Seven hours! I thought. But in the end we took a lot of breaks. Everything fifteen to thirty minutes we'd stop, dance, the kids would do there druming and flute routine, someone would run around handing out juice, puddings, ice creams, green tea, rice balls or dried squid sticks. But I'll talk more about the stops on the next post.

Eventually the sun goes down and it all lights up. This video was shot in night mode so the colors suck. But the picture below shows how it looked.

Oh and also, my PTA buddies and I were handed lanterns...awesome, tattered, spooky lanterns to carry around.

The yatai is mostly children, moms, grandmas, and grandpas. Fathers and all the other strapping young men take part in the omikoshi. An omikoshi is a kind of portable shrine. Here are two resting outside the temple before they leave.

They are carried through the streets on the shoulders of the men (sometimes woman lend a hand...um, shoulder) and visit houses that have donated money or food or drink to the event. Once they get to the house they make a lot of noise, "washoi, washoi!" and shake and heave the jangly omikoshi once again bringing good luck those who reside there. It's all pretty high tension, drunken, boisterous fun. They go before us and kinda let everyone know the yatai is coming.

Here the omikoshi are being put back into the temple for the night.

Okay, next post: the stops we made along the way.

Aki Matsuri -- Part One: Shrine Activities

[This is going to be posted in bite-sized pieces. And not necessarily in order as I have to get some videos off the camera and edit them still.]

Part One: Shrine Activities

Every October our neighborhood has a two-day Harvest Celebration which everyone simply calls the Aki Matsuri -- Fall Festival. The reason I think it's super-cool is because while the local elementary school kids are the main attraction, every single person takes part in one way or another. And I'm talking the extreme elderly all the way down to wee babies...oh, and even pets.

The pictures on my phone were better but you get the idea. Here's a happy pup in his hapi coat. Cha Cha's reaction to me donning him in similar apparel was to shake and bite his way free and then before I could catch him devour a sleeve.

The festival begins and ends at the local shrine. But in between it is one long, rowdy, cacophonous procession of children and adults all duded up in festival clothing, chanting and dancing and pulling an enormous yatai (we'll get to that later) up and down all the streets of our designated neighborhood. To get an idea of how large the area is, we walked six hours both days and still didn't cover it all.

Procession aside for a moment, there is also much fun to be had at the shrine itself. The six am fireworks go off to remind you that you have somewhere to be at nine. That place is the shrine. It's small but lively. There are various booths selling foods, toys, goldfish and beer. And a good number of the men are pretty well hammered by ten am. Which is wonderful when you're out of coins and want to buy something at one of the booths. "Aww~, go ahead, take it! Here, take another. And an extra for your friend there." The children are little masters at that game and soon have their pockets filled to bursting.

Here a little fellow enjoys his shave ice. That is a package of taco balls to his left -- unfortunate name for a tasty food.

Another fall/winter treat is amazake. It's a thick, sweet, steaming drink made from fermented rice. It can contain alcohol in it but this variety doesn't. Every year they make several vats and give it away free to anyone who shows up. If you bring a thermos, saucepan or other container they'll fill it up for you.


Let's not forget the yakitori.

Or the grilled squid.

Inside the shrine they have a large tatami room where special people can go to eat even better food. I found these two pieces of tuna sitting out to defrost.

A week or so beforehand everyone donates some money to the shrine and receives a ticket like this.

You take the top half to the shrine to receive a small box of good luck treats. This year they were pink and white red bean paste cakes. The idea is for every member of the household to take a bite to once more insure luck and health and happiness. Yum!