Back in early February Mashi asked me if I wanted to help make a few things for a local festival that my neighborhood would be having in early March. At the time I wasn't sure what the festival was all about, how much time he was asking for, what we would be making, or who else would be there. But, as is often the case over here, I just agreed and said I would help. So that was that.
During the next couple weeks I ran into Mashi a few more where we usually just greeted each other but once in while we'd mention the festival. When I was with Amy once, Mashi stopped us and asked if she was coming. She answered in the affirmative and at that he went into a hard-to-understand explanation of what the festival was about and then ran into his house, appearing a brief time later with a box of pictures. The pictures were of this same festival in the previous years and we saw happy children, hanging red lanterns, and various other things. "Sure," we thought, "it'll be fun."
I also ran into Mashi once coming home from work. He stopped me and within a few seconds, Robin, my neighbor, also pulled up on her bike. So the three of us talked about the upcoming events a bit (Robin speaks Japanese) and more of the details were ironed out.
It all sounded like fun, but to be honest I didn't exactly know what I was getting myself into. I do enjoy the neighborhood people, but the language barrier to me is sometimes like the Great Wall of China must be to a rabbit, if there are, in fact, rabbits living by the Great Wall. You just look at it and realize that you may never cross it. Somedays this barrier seems like a mere particle of dust on your shoe that you can flick off, other days it seems like the aforementioned Great Wall. But I guess it's really got more to do with your mood on that day and the actual thing you want to get accomplished more than anything else. Anyway, there's no telling how you are going to be feeling on the day of a planned event with the Japanese. So I was looking forward to it in one way and not much in another. But I am in Japan to take as much of it in as I can, so sometimes you just have to dive in and try things out. And I am glad I did (as I usually am).
So the night of February 28th, Robin, Gary, Amy and I (and a girl named Katy who is an ex-JET and was visiting Japan at the time) all met Mashi down by his house. From there we walked down to the local public hall, removed our shoes, and entered the large tatami matted room. Inside there were about 25 or 30 Japanese people, both men and women, and all above the age of fifty. I'd even say most were around 60.
So Mashi ushered us in while the old people watched and Gary and I were told to sit at the male table while the three girls were shown to a female table. Gary and I sat there awaiting further instruction and wondered if this little get together was going to involve anything we might get in a glass or can or bottle. At this point, it seemed not. Eventually Mashi came back and through a series of gestures, and words, both Japanese and English, explained to us what we were going to be doing.
As it turns out, our table, the male table, was essentially an assembly line and we were making these things that I can't quite explain. Imagine a bamboo stick about three feet long and about the diameter of your pinkie finger. Then take the end of that stick and split it lengthwise about 12 inches down. Now in that slit put a piece of paper that has been printed with Kanji characters. Add in a stalk of rice, some tape to hold it all together, and a small bell that you might find on the collar of a neighborhood cat and you have made what we were making. Got the picture? Ok. Now, the first guy was pouring black ink into a tray. The second guy was dipping his large stamp into that tray and then rolling the stamp onto a piece of paper set up for him by the next guy. Then that guy was passing the paper to the next guy who was also stamping Kanji onto the paper, only this time in red. After he was finished he passed it on to another guy, the guy to my left, who was taking this piece of paper and sliding it into another piece of paper that had it's end folded over to hold the first piece in place. He was passing it to me where I was responsible for matching this printed paper set with a perfect stalk of rice (think like a stalk of wheat) from the pile I had before me. Then I passed it to Gary or the next guy, Gary got promoted shortly to flower-on-stick duty, thus, most of the evening I was at a table with a bunch of old Japanese guys who didn't speak a word of English (not a word!), and this guy took a piece of gold tape and attached the rice stalk to the paper. Then he passed it on to the next guy who slid the paper/rice into a bamboo stick. The bamboo stick was then wrapped with tape just below and above the paper by the next guy and then a bell on purple string was attached. And there, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make a.......just what the hell was the name of those things?
Mashi explained some of this to us before we actually did it, pointed to his watch and then the clock on the wall and then said, "Maybe...one hour!"
"Ok," Gary and I said, "We can do that."
But then Mashi spoke again, "Then....break time!"
At this Gary and I looked at each other. "Just how long would we be doing this?" we wondered as in America "break time" implies that the work will continue.
But Mashi spoke again, "After.....shochu time!" A round of cheers went up from the two of us. "And then.....go home!"
So ok, one hour of work and then a few drinks. Didn't sound too bad to us.
So the work began as outlined above with me doing nothing but picking out a stalk of rice, receiving a Kanji-printed paper from the old guy to my left and then passing them both to my right. It was mind numbing work and I thought about people on actual assembly lines in auto factories or candy factories or just factories in general, wondering how they did/do it day after day after day. "At least I only have an hour and will be generously rewarded for it" I thought.
Gary ended up most of the time at a different corner of the room attaching paper flowers to sticks. And the three girls, along with most of the old ladies in the room, were making those paper flowers. It was a bee-hive of activity.
Finally and mercifully the top of the next hour came. We had made a hundred sticks with paper and rice stalks and the flowers were more numerous than I cared to count. But it all looked nice and Gary and I sat with Mashi and were served sweet sake.
Now, sweet sake (I know there is a Japanese name for it but I have no idea what it is) is not what you might think. It is sweet but it is not sake; at least not in my mind. The stuff we were having apparently has no alcohol in it, so I don't know why it is called sake as sake is the Japanese word for alcohol, but perhaps this is just some stupid foreigner's idea of fun. Anyway, to my knowledge this white liquid that I was now drinking had no alcohol in it. But instead of saying "Now look, Mashi, I worked for a solid, coma-inducing hour and I demand to paid in shochu or beer or real sake!" I kindly asked, "Mashi, does this have alcohol in it?" In all honesty it was a innocent question. I really wasn't sure. But Mashi, in his generous and faulty-translating way, ran off to the small kitchen to get me some alcohol to pour into my sweet sake. What a guy! A few minutes later he came back with a paper cup full of something, I think real sake, and poured some into Gary's, mine, and his own drinks. Truthfully, I think Mashi wanted it just as bad as we did, and my asking was an excuse for him to go get some.
So we had snacks, and sake, and beer for about a half hour before, and all at once, nearly the entire room rose in unison to leave. But before we did the ladies shoved as much of the left over snacks and beer as we could carry at us and sent us off. "Arigato....arigato......sayonara!" they screamed at us along with various other presumably nice phrases I don't know.
So that was that.
A couple days later I looked in my mailbox and found a page that was obviously from Mashi. It was all in Kanji and was obviously a schedule of some sort and Mashi had laboriously translated some of it for me and the other English speakers in the building. He even drew a small map on the side. Turns out that this paper was a schedule for the upcoming weekend's festival. "God of the Harvest Festival" it said at the top. I looked it over and translated more of the Kanji in my free time at the Kencho.
So Saturday rolled around and Mashi called me at about the time I had expected him to and I went down the road to find him and a few other JETs that were already there. They were off the main road and up a path that ran up the side of hill. It is quite hard to explain but the path went between a couple houses and was quite rocky and uneven. After about a three minute climb I arrived at the top, with Mashi and Russ (a British JET), and received one of the stick/paper/stalk of rice thingies I had helped make the previous weekend. There was also a small (basically a table with stuff on it) Shinto shrine up there and Mashi said to make the bow and clapping gesture one does at a real Shinto shrine--not that this one wasn't real, it just wasn't a building like I was used to.
After this we all walked down the hill and over to an open-sided building where we sat at a long table and ate sashimi and other snacks and drank beer and sake. I sat next to Mashi and across from Russ and his wife Carolyn and eventually Gary, Robin and Dilek showed up (all live in my building). So we sat around talking and doing what you normally do at party-like events. Later I had to walk down to the local train station to get Amy and a friend named Michele.
So the afternoon turned into evening in this manner and at 6pm the lanterns along the street were lit (one by one with flame). Unfortunately I had forgotten my camera cause it looked really nice but there's always next year I guess. So we all watched (or helped) the lanterns being lit and soon some of the old men of the neighborhood lit a fire in a big metal trash can.
All of this was on the street that had the path leading up the hill coming off it and somehow--I think because we were called to by the drum like Odysseus's crew by the Sirins--Gary, Mashi and I ended up going up the hill again. Up at the top and right next the table shrine was a large drum and one of the neighborhood men was up there beating it in a rapid one-two cadence. One-two, one-two, one-two.....it went. Those people of the neighborhood who chose to could come up, make a small prayer, and receive one of the sticks we had made. I wasn't sure about the significance of all this, I just wanted to try the drum.
So we got up there and the man, probably seeing the hungry look on my face, handed me the big fat drumsticks and I gave it a go. One-two, one-two, one-two...I went. It was an easy beat to keep and Gary and Mashi watched in what must have been complete fascination. Then Mashi grabbed the sticks from me and did the beat. Then he gave them to Gary and Gary did the beat.
And then, with that beat successfully conquered, Mashi grabbed the sticks again, said, "New challenge!" belted out a different beat and then handed the sticks to me. So I did it and then Gary did. This went on several times with Mashi yelling, "New challenge!" at every new round. It was great fun and to our slightly intoxicated ears we sounded damn good.
This must have gone on for about an hour. At one point the girls and Russ came up for a few minutes to watch and listen but soon tired of the natives beating the drum and left us to return to the warm confines of an apartment. Gary, Mashi and I, however, were having too much fun to let the cold night air bite us and just kept going. Boom boom boom well into the night.
Eventually we exhaused ourselves (and ran out of beer) and headed back down the path to the small bon-fire that was now burning and smoking all but the most devout Harvest God believers back into their homes. There were about ten Japanese men and me and Gary. None of them spoke English, except for Mashi's few words, and Gary and I don't speak Japanese, but it is amazing how well we could communicate with gestures and hand-signals. Apparently alcohol helps with sign-language.
So the night soon ended and we walked back to our apartments ready to continue the next day.
The next day was the real part of the festival. Summoned by Mashi's voice over the phone Amy and I walked down to where we had eaten sashimi the night before to find all the characters of the previous night's drama with a few additions. Mashi was there, the old men were there, Robin, Gary and Dilek were there, but now there was also a large group of children. They all wore happi (pronounced hoppy as in "This beer is quite hoppy") coats and were running around playing and chasing each other as children the world over must.
Many of the old men were also wearing the happi-coats and some guy came over to me, took his off, and indicated for me to put it on. So I did and was now one of them. All the while we were taking pictures and looking around and talking and admiring the "portable shrine," as Mashi called it. The shrine was mostly red and black with a few other colors here and there, seemed to made of wood, and had paper flowers and bells and other decorations on it. And all of this was somehow secured on two long red poles.
So we were all standing around when I noticed that the drum from the night before had somehow moved down the hill and had taken refuge in the bed of a small white pickup. I didn't think too much about it as I figured my drumming days for this festival were over, but one of the old guys got up there and started beating the thing and then motioned for me to come up there and take a turn. So I did and before I knew it Gary and I were chosen as the two guys to beat the drum while our procession moved slowly around the neighborhood.
This procession consisted of the truck with drum, then about 25 kids of varying ages carrying the portable shrine, some adults sprinkled here and there to make sure all was ok, then a cart on which was a money box so the people we passed could make donations (it was all decorated too), then more adults which included Amy, Robin and Dilek, and then another truck which Mashi drove and collected any gifts that the neighborhood people wanted to donate.
Gary was up first and I sat in the back of the truck. They had told us what to do and we moved off. BOOM-BOOM-"WA-SHOI!" we went down the street, BOOM-BOOM-"WA-SHOI!" And it went on like that. Gary would hit the drum twice in two beats about half a second apart and then the kids would all yell "WA..SHOI!" That word, I know because it was asked, doesn't mean anything. It is no more than sound used for heavy lifting. Kinda like an "Argg" might be to a pirate or a "Ummph" might be to an defensive linesman. I imagine it might carry a little more significance than that but not too much so.
So around the neighborhood we went. Up this street, turn that way, down that street, and on and on. Some, very few, of the neighborhood people came out to their front step to watch and wave. Funny part was that the old people tended to have that look on their faces that said, "Why are couple of white guys beating the drum this year?"
Finally, after about 10 or 15 minutes we came to a house and stopped. At this point I didn't know what was happening but it turned out to be a temporary stop for the kids to get snacks and drinks. So they did, Gary and Robin buggered off, and I was in sole possession of the drum duties.
After about five minutes of drumming and "washoi-ing" we came to another pit stop. This time there was sake and beer to be had, so I had. This place was a nice place and Dilek translated for me that the owners of this house also owned some business building that I pass on my bike nearly everyday. "Ok," I thought, "rich people. That explains the drink selection and the large gate."
And then, a few minutes later, we were off again.
BOOM-BOOM-"WA-SHOI!"
We ended up making about 5 or 6 stops in all and I noticed that besides the first stop all the rest seemed to be at the nicer houses of the neighborhood. They would have snacks and drinks for the kids and two or three of them had sake for the adults. At each I had a little sake, talked with Amy and Dilek, and would then be summoned to return to the drum.
We ended back where we started, the kids got bags of something and Amy, Dilek and I got the satisfaction of having taken part in a yearly Japanese neighborhood tradition. It was quite cool and Mashi and the rest of the old men told me what I fine job I did with that intricate beat I had to negotiate while maintaining my balance in a moving truck.
BOOM-BOOM-"WA-SHOI!"