MatthewMeyer.net Blog

On Saturday a friend and I went to the Otabi Festival in Komatsu. I'm not sure exactly what the Otabi festival is, but it was a really cool 3-day festival. All the streets were decked out in pink paper lanterns, and the main street of Komatsu was filled with little tent-shops. It looked a lot like the Mayfair on Haddon Ave. What was really different was that they build these giant wooden floats that are actually shrines, and they drag these shrines on a path all through town. It takes them all day to get from one end of town to the other, becuase they visit every single store in the town, and each store presents the people dragging this giant multi-ton shrine with a bottle of sake, which they drink. I can only imagine how plastered they must have been at the end of the night.

There was a Shinto shrine in the city offerent blessings and fortunes all day long. I would have gotten one if I knew how to read it. The bad fortunes you leave at the shrine by tying them onto a tree. The park area with the shrine was absolutely gorgeous. I was sketching it until some Mormons came up and started bugging me and trying to convert me... oi... can't ever escape the Mormons. There was an amazing Taiko performance there. Incredible drum and flute playing, very noisy and very fun to watch.

The highlight of the Otabi festival is the Children's Kabuki. Since 1776, the children of Komatsu have been putting on a Kabuki show. The floats, which were pulled all around town, end up in the town square and become the stage for the Kabuki play. It's performed entirely by little girls, and their costumes and makeup are absolutely fantastic. They even say the lines perfectly, accompanied by a narrator and a sangen player. It was just like watching Kwaidan, or other Japanese movies with Kabuki-style theater. Completely amazing. I took lots of pictures, so I will share those at some point. At the end of the show, the kids all came out and threw candy into the audience.

Sunday we were supposed to plant rice in the town, but it was raining too hard (the rainy season has come early this year) so it was cancelled. Instead I walked around town and then at night one of my classmate's host family ate over my host family's house (our mothers are friends). We had a lot of fun, and my okaasan made some of the best food I've ever tasted. It was some kind of stir fry right at the table, very noisy and very delicious. Lots of beer and sake too. We all talked as best as we could; her parents know more English than mine, so they translated what they could, and they all had their pocket dictionaries out to help. Leslie's mother sings, and when she got drunk she really sang loud.

I wish I could show you how amazing that kabuki was... I hope I get the chance to see something like it again.

Classes are going pretty well, though they're getting harder and harder. There are too many different ways of counting. We have to learn different counters for people, things, small things, long thin things, numerical order, days of the week, time, years, mechanical things, flat things... it's insane. I still have to remember days of the week. That on top of words of relation such as on top of, inside, outside, near, under, behind, in front of... very very confusing. There are so many particals too... it is getting very difficult.