On the 27th my JT Yuko took me
to Saijo to see main Ishizuchi Shrine. This had been something that we planned
to do back in August but we just didn’t have the time to get together. However
on this weekend just before Halloween we were able to arrange a time to meet
and go to the shrine.
We met up just before noon and grabbed Udon
for lunch. This is the second time I’ve had Udon since moving to Japan and
though Shikoku is known for Udon, it’s not my favourite meal. It was a nice
lunch though and filling for the day ahead.
From there Yuko drove us up to the shrine.
It’s a small shrine dedicated to Mount Ishizuchi. Like most shrines in Japan
it’s a beautiful and though man made is mixed in with nature. This shrine is
located at the base of the mountain and to get up to the shrine building you
pass through two torii – one painted red and the other made of stone. From
there we parked and headed up the stairs to the main building.
We passed a small koi pond and Yuko told me
that in Japan it’s a hobby and skill to breed koi of certain colours and sizes.
She also told me that to buy a koi from Japan you could be spending up to $6000
dollars, which I didn’t believe could be the cost for a fish.
After that it was up to the main building.
We were lucky as that day the shrine was holding a wedding. It meant that I got
to see inside the main shrine building as well as seeing traditional wedding
clothes and a ceremony. We didn’t stay for the whole ceremony, but I did snap
some photos of the couple.
The shrine is also one of the best places
to get a panoramic view of Saijo. From the side of the shrine you can look out
and see the city laid out below. Though it’s not the top of a huge mountain it
does make you feel like you are on top of the world.
The Niihama Taiko Festival is also known as The Men Festival or Otokomatsuri男祭り。The festival happens every year between the 15th and 18th
of October and is dedicated to the local gods thanking them for a good harvest.
Niihama isn’t the only city in Japan that has a taiko festival, but it is one
of the more famous ones and can have 150 thousand spectators visiting the city.
The great sight of the festival is the taiko-dai which means “drum-float”, taiko being drum in Japanese. There are
51 taikodai in Niihama, which
represent the different neighbourhoods in the city, these are then broken down
into 5 districts each holding their own carrying competition.
On the street going past Niihama Station
The taikodai
are 5.4m high, 3.5m wide, supported by four 12m poles at the base and weigh up
to 2.5 tons, they require 150 men to
carry one. (I do bold men as the festival is the ‘men festival’ and the
tradition is that men can only carry the float also one must be strong to lift
and carry the float as they do.) The taikodai
are handmade and can be worth up to $100,000US – which is crazy when you see
what they do with floats. The floats are made of a four-sided wooden centre
frame, which are covered in hand embroidered panels; there are 3 panels per
side. The four sides represent the four cardinal directions. The golden thread
panels have dragons, castles, animals, samurai and other images. The top part
of the column is called the tenmaku
and represents the skies or universe. In here there is a red, blue and white fabric,
which represents the sun. To the corners of the column there are figure eight
black knots called the kukuri and
they represent the clouds, these knots have tassels attached to them
represented the rain, these are called the fusa.
The column. Inside is the taiko
Inside the column is a huge taiko played by one or two men. On the
poles four team members stand control the team with flags, whistles and chants.
They stand there to help with guiding and with motivating the others to lift.
Then up in the top of the column sit four more men. It is a precarious position
to be in as the floats are lifted and moved because they have a tendency to
tip.
Though the festivities last for 3
days I really only went to see one event, this is because the first day events
I was working in Saijo, the second day it poured rain and a speaking to a
friend they said that the events were cancelled. I went on the 18th
to the competition at Ikku Shrine. Here the taiko
teams enter the shrine and then have a lifting competition. What the teams do
is take the float lift it to their shoulder and lift it above their heads. Here
they bounce it trying to hold it aloft the longest. The most impressive was the
orange team that held it up for quite awhile.
This is a video I caught of the lifting in action:
After
viewing the parade the group and I headed into the shrine to see the floats and
also to see if there would be a “fight”. Taikodai
fights have also become a tradition.A
“fight” is two taikodai teams ramming
their floats into one another until one or both are destroyed; the aim is
trying to break the taiko of the
other team. Which seems ridiculous when you think that of the time and cost
that went into making this float. The tradition can also become very dangerous;
there have been deaths and lost limbs due to being caught in between the four
poles as the two floats crash. My friend told me a story about a ‘fight’ in Doi
where a gaijin was part of a team and his team got into a fight, it turned
fatal when the person behind this guy had their head smashed by the poles. This
is the reason that the authorities ask that teams do not fight, but it does
happen. (I didn't see any 'fights' so here's another taikodai picture)
All in all it was a great week to
be in Shikoku. I had a great time during matsuri, even though I did get sicker.
After seeing the two different festivals I did have a little more fun in Saijo
because I felt like I was part of it a little bit more because you are in with
the crowd and really feeling the excitement, where as with the Niihama festival
you are a little more removed from the actual event. My friend Nick made a
great comment saying that the Niihama Taiko Festival is “more a spectacle.”
Which I agree with it’s really something to see.
From October 14th at
midnight to the 16th late in the evening Saijo celebrated it’s
harvest matsuri. Matsuriまつり in English is festival and though there are other festivals throughout the year, saying the city name + matsuri it seems to identify this specific occasion.
Though I do not live
in Saijo a bunch of my friends do so I went to spend the evening there on the
15th. What I didn’t realize was that the actual celebrations do not
get started until midnight or later so I was in for a long evening. It was
worth staying up until 5am to the see a lot of the lit up danjiri
gathered in the field by the river.
Most festivals at
this time of the year are celebrating a good harvest and thanking the kami for granting that. In Saijo the
festival consists of making danjiri
and parading them through the city before ending up at the river. The danjiri are hand made wood structures
that are surrounded by lanterns and carried by 50 person teams. Each team has
it’s own name and coloured happi thereby identifying you to everyone. The danjiri are meant to be miniature shrines
or temples where kami reside. Making danjiri isn’t exclusive to Saijo, but it
was the closest that I would most likely come to seeing one up close.
Another reason that
the festival was a lot of fun to go to was because Bret was on a team with a
few his Japanese friends and guys that I have hung out with a few times. At one
point Angelina and I went to find Bret and his team, we met up with him and Sho
and I got a nice picture the their happi. We followed his team into the field
and walked behind them as they made their way to the shrine to lift up the danjiri. It’s quite a feat to see
because of how heavy it is and the fact that it does tip to the side if the
balance is off.
Bret and his team lifting the danjiri
The whole night/early
morning was quite fun to be a part of; the sight of all the lanterns on the danjiri, the smells of the food vendors
and the sounds of the singing and shouting. It was a fun thing to witness and I
am happy to have seen it, as it becomes something more than just watching a
festival.
Up next post will be a little bit about the Niihama otokomatsuri男祭り。The taikodai festival in Niihama.
Finding a hair salon in Japan is
like looking for a blade of grass on a front lawn. They can be found on almost
any city corner and it’s more than likely that a city will have multiple ones.
If you want a hair cut, colour, perm, extension up-do or even just a simple
curl with a curling iron just look for the words Hair Make and you are looking
at a salon.
Now my own story about my hair.
In late 2011 I decided to be bold and cut off most
of my hair for a short, punky look and I loved it. It was one of the best hair
decisions I made because there was so little maintenance. I’ve kept it that
length since.
However I have been missing my
long hair and decided that I wanted to grow it out again. Prior to leaving for
Japan I got it cut and I thought I would leave it, but the growing out process
is kind of a pain and my hair was looking funny, so I decided I wanted a cut to
even it all out. When I made that decision I also thought why not dye it, try
something a little different while I’m here away from “real life”.
And that is how I went from this
[Early September]:
At the hair make:
To this auburn, nicely shaped hair style:
Don’t get me wrong it was a hard
decision to come to, as I love the dark natural colour of my hair. I also
didn’t want to damage my hair by lightening it because I’ve never really dyed
or coloured my hair so drastically. [With the exception of a few patches of
blonde once or twice]
It was the fact though that the
Japanese know how to cut and colour hair very well that helped me make my
decision. A majority of people that I see on a daily basis all have their hair
coloured. It’s something that they really like to do; so seeing a blonde
Japanese woman isn’t really a surprise. The women here spend a lot of money to
get their hair done an done well, that is why the stylists and colourists all
are trained very well to make sure that they don’t severely damage or ruin
hair. They man who did my hair was recommended to me by one of my Japanese
friends and he did a fantastic job. I am very happy and really love my new
look.
