Matsuri Day!

~Another exciting and hectic week of teaching is over! While riding my bicycle to work today, I couldn't help but notice the large street festival taking place in downtown Nagaoka. During my lunch break, I wandered out a bit and managed to take some pictures:

^ The Nagaoka City Fireman Band was playing here for some reason. A group of old men wearing red armbands were lined up in front of the band; hazarding a guess, I'd say they were retired firefighters. Anyway, the band was really good. Nothing like a good brass band to lighten your mood.

^ As I mentioned before, Japanese teenagers are obsessed with hip-hop dancing. For hour after hour, successive dancing teams took to the street and performed their dance routines. I gathered that these girls in black are a high school team.

^ Here's another hip-hop team showing their stuff. These girls were dancing to loud American music, although for the life of me I couldn't make out the song.

^ One of those air-filled trampoline things that everyone loves to jump around in. It's modeled after Anpanman, an insanely popular children's cartoon character. His head is made out of jam-filled bread and he fights villains, and his head is always getting eaten off or burned and needs to be replaced. Disturbing.

Incidentally, one of my students is a girl with a round face and red cheeks, who told me that her parents nicknamed her 'Anpanman' because she looks like the character. Fortunately for her sanity, she has an easy-going disposition and laughs it off.

^ A motorized train ride for the kids behind Anpanman. The guy in the blue shirt (left-center) was the operator, and he looked completely beat and in desperate need of a drink. I hope he got a break.

^ The festival was not all entertainment; it was also to attract people to an open-air market along the streets, where vendors sold food, clothing, toys, artwork, saké, etc. There were also some more "interesting" things for sale:

^ All your life, you've wanted a pet to love and take care of, but your parents never let you. Now, for a mere 2,500 yen, you can be the proud owner of a Stag Beetle! This shiny, lovable insect is ready to be your pal. Take him home today! Have him fight to the death with the beetles of your friends, or love him forever; it's your choice.

Collecting large beetles is apparently a popular summer pastime for Japanese boys. Remember my insect-obsessed student? Two days ago, he brought a field guide on beetles to class, and eagerly pointed out the beetles that he'd collected so far. Well, to each his own.

^ The flail pictured above is not a toy; it was a real medieval-replica (?) steel weapon for only 3,000 yen (~$26). I was tempted to buy it to defend myself from possible North Korean invaders. And annoying children. And people who stare too much at foreigners. And noisy dogs. Seriously though, the nearby flintlock pistol would have complemented it nicely and struck fear into the hearts of...well, of whoever happened to be on the receiving end.

Your Word of the Post is matsuri, which is Japanese for festival (ma-tsu-ri, 祭 ). This festival was sponsored and organized by some kind of local commerce association, and I was delighted to discover that it is in fact a monthly event. Every month, on the second Thursday or Saturday (depending on the weather), there's all this entertainment. How cool is that? Why don't we have monthly festivals in the Raleigh area?

Finally, here's an interesting piece of artwork I ran across some time ago. It's not Japanglish, but it's something you probably won't see in America:

^ These lovable, cuddly bears grace the wall of a convenience store in Nagaoka (near the N-1 "pachinko" building...a possible connection?). The store itself stocks a large quantity of liquor for those late-night beer runs. These friendly-looking bears are here to attract the children and show them that drinking is FUN! Note the happy smile on the face of the bear on the right. Hey, I'd be happy too if I was holding a bottle of wine or whatever that is. ~Oyasumi!

(Nuclear?) Launch Detected!

~Big news over here in Japan, people. Continuing on the subject of airstrikes, you may have heard that everyone's favorite totalitarian nation, North Korea, just test-launched seven ballistic missiles, which all landed in the Sea of Japan just a few hundred miles from Yours Truly:

^ The missile launches were (thankfully) only tests, and crashed into the Sea of Japan a minute or so after launch. This was most likely the whole point: for North Korea to flex its military muscles so as to get more foreign aid. Or maybe Kim Jong Il was just feeling "so ronrey", and wanted attention.

^ North Korea tested six missiles with a "short" range of only a few hundred miles (i.e., enough to hit most of Japan) and one long-range missile (a Taepodong-2, pictured above) ttheoretically capable of hitting the Western United States:

^ Doesn't this map just make you sleep sounder at night? While the United States military is entirely committed to propping us a pseudo-democratic regime in the Middle East in order to secure oil supplies, a nation that has declared its intention to annihilate America with nuclear weapons is testing intercontinental missiles on the other side of the planet. The quick, decisive response from the White House was, "We are consulting with international partners on next steps."

Japan rightfully considers North Korea a huge threat, but can't really do anything except complain to the United States. People here in Niigata prefecture are terrified of North Korea for a number of reasons:

a) In 1998, N.K. launched a ballistic missile over Japan; in fact, it flew right over Niigata. During last year's earthquake, the manager of my school at first thought the shaking was a missile attack and was afraid to go outside.

b) Over the past few decades, North Korean spy ships have been prowling the waters off of Japan, occasionally slipping into Japanese territory to abduct a Japanese person, haul them back to Japan, and force them to help train North Korean spies. In fact, parents in Niigata use North Korea as a generic bogeyman to scare children into not traveling alone. "Don't stay outside at night, or the North Koreans will kidnap you!"

I hope everyone enjoyed their Fourth of July rockets. Over in this area, it seems we received some unexpected and extremely unwelcome rockets. ~Oyasumi!

Celebrate Your Indy Pendence!

~Happy Fourth of July, everyone! For those of you living in Raleigh, catch the fireworks at Symphony Lake in Cary. For those of you who will be celebrating at home after your "trip" to the South Carolina border, please don't burn down your house/apartment/university. The paperwork is insane, I tell you.

The fireworks over here are supposedly fantastic. Japan is known for producing the best fireworks in the world, and the yearly fireworks festival in Nagaoka is unquestionably the best fireworks show in Japan (and, by default, the entire world). Every year on August 2nd and 3rd, the city shoots thousands of fireworks above the river that divides the town. That's TWO DAYS of massive fireworks, which attract hundreds of thousands of people. Just what makes these fireworks so impressive? For one thing, there's the sheer SIZE of them:

^ This fireworks is called "Sanjaku-gosun dama" and it's about one meter in diameter (a little over three feet, for you metric-deprived folks). Notice how there are dozens of other fireworks inside of this one large sphere. When launched, it explodes in a pattern over 700 meters in diameter! I can't wait to see these suckers blast off in August.

You might be asking, "How exactly do you launch something that big?" Why, you use one of these:

^ The caption reads: "A huge shooting pipe for the biggest fireworks in Japan. In the summer festival, the biggest fireworks are set off from this pipe on the Shinano River." I assume that you could also use this cannon to blast a fair-sized hole in a castle wall, or take out a regiment of cavalry.
Naturally, your Word of the Post is hanabi ( 花 火 ), which is Japanese for fireworks:

^ The front of a shirt I purchased at the Rose Festival a few weeks ago.

The American tradition of shooting of fireworks on July 4th harkens back to our national anthem, written during the War of 1812. What better way to remind us of, "And the rockets' red glare/The bombs bursting in air", than with colorful, untargeted airstrikes?

Speaking of airstrikes (now that's not an opening line you hear every day), I learned the fascinating history behind Nagaoka's fireworks festival. The annual celebration commemorates August 1, 1945--one of Nagaoka's darkest days. On that night, 126 American B-29 bombers blitzed Nagaoka in a massive airstrike for almost two hours, leveling the entire city and killing around 1,460 people. The fireworks are pretty to look at, but the truth is that they commemorate the deaths of so many that were killed by decidedly un-pretty explosions and fires. I'm still amazed that they don't hate Americans for it.

When you watch the fireworks this year, please give a salute to the 2,530 American soldiers killed so far in Iraq and the over 8,500 that have been wounded or maimed. Some people believe that we must "stay the course" (what course?) to honor their sacrifices, but I believe the opposite. To me, "supporting the troops" means not sending them to some desert hellhole in order to line the pockets of greedy politicians and corporations. The real terrorists are running amok in Afghanistan, where Bin Laden is still sending out orders, the Taliban is picking off coalition troops, and this year's opium crop is the largest ever.

If that's too depressing for you, take solace in the fact that thanks to the war, the stock prices of Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and Exxon-Mobil are performing superbly! Invest your 401(k) wisely and you might just end up a millionaire! Remember, the more money you make, the proportionally bigger tax cut you get, so it's in your best financial interests to seize every worthwhile investment opportunity that our military-industrial complex so generously creates.

Ack, political ranting always makes me feel vaguely dirty. So remember, on the 4th of July, a) be careful with your fireworks, b) think about what really matters to our people and nation, and c) beware of orbital bombardment. ~Oyasumi!

Sawakai

~It's hard to believe that I've been in Japan for over three months! I'm here on a one-year contract, which is now over 25% complete. Although my days at work seem to last forever, in retrospect the time has really flown by. Anyway, seeing as how I've been here for over 100 days, I figured that perhaps it might be a good idea for me to actually learn some useful Japanese. Therefore, yesterday was my very first Japanese class, which is held in the Civics Center in downtown Nagaoka.

The class was taught almost entirely in Japanese, and consisted of me, the instructor, and three Brazilians who spoke incessantly in Portuguese. There are normally more Brazilians, but the Brazil-France World Cup match was on the night before, so you can imagine why most of the students were absent. The instructor kept saying, "Nihongo, Nihongo!", which is Japanese for, well, Japanese. The lesson itself consisted of some hiragana and katakana practice, followed by how to ask and answer the question, "Whose _____ is this?":

The lesson was vastly amusing to me because only one day before, I taught the exact same lesson in English to a group of Japanese students. I found it very enlightening to be on the receiving end of a lesson taught in a different language, and to feel the same way my students must feel when someone is trying to teach them in a language that they understand only a small fraction of.

On the other hand, my older students have supposedly been studying English in school for years now, so they really have no excuses for ignorance.

After my class, I attended an event in the Civics Center called Sawakai, which was a hands-on Japanese Culture workshop (for only 100 yen!). The first thing I did was get dressed in yukata, a sort of informal, lightweight cotton kimono worn in the evening:

^ Actually putting on a yukata is quite difficult, and I needed some assistance to do so. The trickiest part was the obi, a wide sash-like belt that has to be tied off in the back.

^ Here are us guys, waiting impatiently for the Presbyterian Church to issue us our lightsabers (obi = Obi Wan Kenobi?). Seriously though, I liked the wave pattern on the lower part of the yukata.

^ A picture of everyone who wore yukata, and the people who helped us put them on. Note that the color and pattern of the yukata worn by the girls is different.

~Once everyone was in traditional Japanese attire, we were treated to a presentation on sado ( 茶 道 ), which is the art of Japanese tea ceremony. The ceremony itself is extremely complex and ritualized and dates back over a thousand years, encompassing not only elaborate tea-making but also how to serve it, when to serve it, etc. Today, tea ceremony is very popular and is studied/practiced by millions, both men and women, including the (female) manager of my school.

If tea ceremony sounds boring to you, perhaps a bit of history will help you understand: the art became very popular during a particularly peaceful time in feudal Japan, because it was something complicated that people could do without killing each other. This is similar to how modern society obsesses over sporting events, because it's a (comparatively) peaceful way of venting social aggression rather than outright violence.

^ A Japanese woman demonstrates tea ceremony. She wore traditional dress and used the same items used in tea ceremony for centuries. That is, except forthe hot-water cooker. I'm guessing there's a regulation in place against open flames in public buildings.

^ Everyone watching as the tea ceremony went on. Note how some people are sitting cross-legged, while others are kneeling.

^ I tried to kneel, but after ten minutes or so my legs were killing me so I reverted to sitting cross-legged. It's just been too long since kneeling meditation in those karate classes in sixth grade.

^ Mmmmm! The prepared tea was formally presented to us, each with our own ceramic cup. Although it looked like green sludge, it was actually not half bad. While drinking it, I kept hearing the voice of an English knight saying to me, "He chose...poorly."

^ After the tea ceremony, it was time to take off the yukata. Again, this was more difficult than you might think. It turns out that they needed to be folded in a very precise way before they could be put away, a process that took quite some time.

^ In the end, I did manage to get mine folded properly. With a little bit of help. Okay, so I mostly just sat there and watched while one of the event organizers folded it for me, patiently stopping my clueless attempts at assistance.

~ After the tea ceremony, the event became less formal:
^ We were treated to live music and singing courtesy of some Brazilian musicians. These guys were great!

^ There was also food: "traditional" Japanese chocolate cookies! Also, I partook in the tradition of writing your hopes and wishes for the year and tying the paper to the branches of a tree (you can see it in the background of the above picture). On my paper, I wrote, "I want to learn Japanese and make a lot of new friends in Nagaoka. I also want to visit many places in Japan and have new and exciting experiences."

In case you were wondering, I wrote it in English. Does this mean my wish won't come true...?

~For the ladies, there were some very nice kimonos to try on:

^ I convinced my friend Hiroko to try one on! Notice the interesting dragonfly pattern on the kimono, and how it's much more colorful and elaborate than the everyday yukata we were wearing before.

^ Japanese girls love having their picture taken. Guys, pay attention: that's something to remember if you ever find yourself in Japan...

^ ...and from the back. Notice how much more colorful the obi (belt) is on an actual kimono. As the Japanese say, kawaii! (That means "cute").

Wow, there sure were a lot of Japanese words in this post. Just for fun, try to use one of them in a conversation. That's all for today; remember, please leave a comment if you have something to say. ~Oyasumi!