巻夏まつり

Last weekend was the annual Maki Summer Festival. Maki's festival is rather early in the season and it lasts for an entire weekend. Festivities start Friday night with a parade where various businesses and organizations make floats, dress in yukata (summer kimono) or happis and drink sake between rounds of the traditional parade dance. The rest of the weekend is packed with events like school band performances, children's parades, fireworks, live karaoke, street dance performances and of course, matsuri food stalls run by Japanese gangsters.

Last year I was asked to be in the Friday night parade with the town office, but this year I wasn't. I felt weird about that until I realized that it's probably because we were swallowed up by Niigata City last October and therefore, there is no more town office. Japanese politics - I don't get it either.
From last year's parade. God, I look goofy

This is the Maki fish. These things are all over the place during festival time. Wonder what I have to do to get someone to give me a mini one as a going-away gift?




Friday night Kayvohn, Kate and I had a couple drinks and headed out to the festivities. The paper-lantern lit streets were swarming with my students (and a few of Kate's and Kayvohn's) and we were constantly greeted by choruses of "Oh, Melissa sensei da!" "Keit-o sensei!" and "Kehbohn sensei!" I think we played the part of the local celebrities quite well, and I even made them practice their English outside of school hours (gasp!). My personal favorite was the chugakko 1-nen sei boy who peeked around my paper fan, noticed my beer can and said "That is a beer!" We just finished the 'this is a pen; that is a book' unit in school, so despite the potential unwholesomeness of the whole situation, I was quite charmed by him. And for the record, whenever they noticed my beer, I lied and said it was juice. Do you think they bought it?
My elementary students and their キモイボールs

Boys from Nishi Chu


Eventually we stumbled upon a most unusual sight: other foreigners in my town! There was a Turkish kebab stall run by real live Turkish people. Being in Japan for this long, and being slightly intoxicated, Kate and I reacted as any sheltered, small-town Japanese person would: by stopping dead in our tracks and staring. One of the guys broke the awkwardness (we can't help it!) by asking where we are from, which sparked a nice conversation and the purchase of my first-ever drunken kebab (now I get what all the Brits are always going on about). While we were chatting, I turned around and noticed a mob of about 20 of my students watching in awe as Melissa sensei communicated to someone other than their JTEs. We got the students in on the conversation (English only, despite the fact that the Turks could probably speak better Japanese) and some of them even purchased the weirdo gaikoku-land (foreign) food.
If that's not internationalization at it's finest, I don't know what is.
The Turkish guy, my students from Higashi Chu and a big knife


Saturday afternoon was gorgeous so Kate and I made our rounds of the children's parades and my school bands performances, stopping along the way to talk to various students and other people from around town.
The Shrine in downtown Maki with some priests(?) awaiting their turn to march.

Elementary students in the Children's Parade

Random street in the maze that is Maki

Higashi Chu girls in Yukata, Kaede, Sayaka, Yuki, Yoko, me

Taiko boys


By night we watched the 1-hour display of fireworks. For those who don't know, fireworks in Japan are quite different from those in America. Instead of blasting off 100 fireworks in 15 minutes like we do in the States, fireworks displays here last much longer. A company or individual will sponsor one firework. Before the firework is set off an announcer says the name of the sponsor and a number rating, which (I think) is a measure of its size. It's an interesting way of doing it. Because each firework has been carefully selected, they tend to be more majestic than those at home, but to be honest I think the constant noise from the announcer kind of spoils the whole thing. Ah, well.

On Sunday, Kayvohn, Phil, Makiko and I went down to Teradomari with Arisaka-san and Satomi-san from the Cottage, Satou-san and a bunch of other guys to spend the afternoon on their boat and jet-skis. Despite a sunny forecast, it was cloudy and windy and a bit cool on Sunday (anyone else noticed that the weather reports in Japan are always wrong?!). We ganbatta'd through it all though and it turned out to be a great day. We took a break at lunch to drink beers and barbecue the pounds of marinated beef, checken and pork they brought as well as some fish they had caught that very day. We also ate squid and some other fish raw, and literally straight out of the ocean. You don't get sashimi much fresher than that, eh?

In the afternoon Makiko and I suited up into wetsuits (very flattering) and went out on the jet skis with Satou-san and another very genki 55+ year old. Seriously, these dudes put us right to shame.
Arisaka-san, Satou-san and a seaweed wig

Oh, yes


All in all, it was a quality weekend. Made even more quality by the safe arrival of SJ and Kevin in Portland. Can't wait!