The Eye of Patrick

Sunday nite and another day without my computer, i am starting to create a rythem for such an evironment. It just means rather then waste my time doing endless chats and continous news reading i spend it living in the real world. This weekend was one of those weekends that reconfirmed my faith in Japan. On Saturday i went to an Danjuri festival near Osaka. It was with my Japanese anthro class. My roommate was suppose to come too as he is in the class, but he had to “study” so i went alone. Which was not a problem as i wanted to remember Japan for what i accomplished rather then staying back in my dorm hearing others stories. So i arrived at the train station worried that i had not caught the right train, then i ran into an Italian from my class, he was nice and friendly, which was a change from the stupid italian who is in my Contemp. Business class. We ran into our teacher, and he gave us a quick run down of what was expected and stuff. I was slightly worried as i am a shy person, so to go into a new situation alone was scary as it seemed everyone was in groups. (I am uploading pictures as we speak) We made a tour of the area and he told us lots of history as he had lived there for a very long time before. Supposely it was the Yakuniku capital of Japan because it has the largest number of Yakuniku resturants in Japan. (Yakuniku Japanese BBQ where you cook the food in front of you) So as we walked the street you could just smell the meat and wish you could go in. But we had made plans to eat at 6 so i decided to wait. He took us on a tour of Korea Town and that was interesting, as supposely Korea Town is only a new thing. Like it was there before, but it was only until recently was it socially acceptable for Koreans to show pride in their heritage. So that when they started to make offical Korea towns, the local people some of them got upset, and so rather to flame more flames they decided to change it from a Town to a Korean Street. But slowly the social status of Korean’s changed and as a result it was able to offically become a town. But then even then, only 2 of the 3 areas that the government wanted to name Korean town’s became Korea towns as the other areas did not want to be associated with Korea. The Korean’s in Japan are an interesting bunch of people, as they have been here for a while, but even then they are not considered Japanese to a degree because in Japan, the term Japanese is usually associated with race, rather then birth place. Then we went to a Korean resturant for dinner as we were all getting hungry and needed to get some food to fill us up. So the teacher took us to a resturant, where it was different then what i was expecting. I was expecting a korean bbq, but we got instead was a more seafood style resturant. We had squid with noodles, octopus and other sea creatures. It was nice and interesting. I had a beer with a teacher which was an interesting experience as i have never had a drink with a teacher before. But many people were drinking so it was not a problem. Then… after that we went out in to the streets as the festival was really starting.

“A danjiri is a traditional type of wooden float, decorated with various ornaments, that is drawn around the town during festival days. Depending on the festival and locality they may also be called dashi, yamagasa or yatai. Around 30 massive floats made from unpainted wood play the major role during this festival, and, it is known as the Danjiri Festival.

From early in the morning to late in the evening of September 14th, groups of young people draw around the town the floats that are the pride of the neighborhood in which they live. If they should run into a danjiri from another neighborhood, the participants compete to ram the floats into each other in encounters. This is why the Danjiri Festival is often referred to as fighting festival. “

It was such an interesting and awe inspring experience i must say… it made me feel like i was in Japan, as you saw all these little kids and adults celebrating the festival, with such a live and exciting spirit. My teacher made an interesting point, that may be the reason that they are able to let there childern go so crazy is because Japanese culture is so rule driven that when they test the limits of society that everyone knows where it is, they are able to stop. This was great… i feel felt a part of Japan. (seeing my pictures won’t finish tonite i will show them later)

But after the festival we were invited to the club house of one of the Danjiri floats and there we had food, WOW is all i can say, the food was some of the greats food. They had chicken nuggets that were made of white meat, fries, sausages, and so on… i was amazed and other stuff.

I was more amazed at the hospitality, they were so friendly to us, i felt bad as i could not really communicate with them. But even then just smiling and laughing and stuff we were able to have a great time. We chatted about our ages, there was an old guy there who asked how old he was, i said 28 and he thought it was funny haha… i was only joking with them.

I seriously can say since coming to Japan, this is one of the most happiest japanese moments i have, not that the other moments i have experienced were not great, but i do not know, something about being so close to a festival made it seem so real. So yes… i want to go to another festvial