Nagoya Matsuri (名古屋祭り）

Saturday was the annual Nagoya Festival, and man was it amazing. The picture above is of one of the bird men from the parade. I'm sure there's a more official name for them, but I don't know it. All I know is that they were colorful and probably my favorite part about the day.

The Nagoya Festival started in the 1950s, and goes for two days in October. There are various events, including marching band performances, dance exhibitions, and street performers set up through the city. I spent most of the day in Sakae, where the major Saturday parade ended. The highlight of Saturday's parade is the reenactments of historical battles featuring Nagoya's three featured leaders of the "Warring States period" (16th century): Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

The man featured above is Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He stood out as the hammiest on in the entire parade, which in a show with battles, warrior maidens and hundreds of dancers, is saying something. He had a good eight or nine different poses in his repertoire, and the parade-goers were eating it up. All he did was look warlord-like and stand on the float, but for some reason I have five or six photos of him.

As is probably apparent from the photos, it was a really colorful event. You can't tell here, but this group of about a hundred women was actually made up of elderly women. They came around about halfway through the parade, at which point I was actively being jostled by the people around me. The setup for the audience was such that there were tarps, big enough to sit about three people deep, lining all the streets. This basically meant there was mortal combat to get grandmothers and small (and therefore short) children into these prime seats. I didn't sit down, but I was in the first row of standing people, which put me in between the people who wanted a seat and the empty spaces on the tarp. The somewhat painful lesson of the day was that shopping bags make for pretty effective weapons.

After dinner at Parco, my favorite department store, Jess and I took the subway to Osu Kannon, where there were street performers in the alley and performances at the temple itself. We caught the tale end of the oiran (female performers only seen by the imperial court in their day) show and took pictures. They then started processing through the alley:

After that, things took a turn for the less cultural. We stumbled onto one of the side streets, where there was some sort of wordless, avant garde play with a live, experimental jazz band accompanying it. I couldn't get any good pictures, but it involved women with six-inch-long fingers carrying around a samurai's bloody head and a near-naked man convulsing and speaking in tongues.

When that ended, we headed to the temple for the final performance of the night. It had been billed in my pamphlet as another oiran performance, but it turned out to be something entirely different. And strange. It was a set of six college students naked and painted entirely gold. Their danced for about twenty minutes—to what I think was an Indian song—while periodically gyrating and waving around torches. I still have no idea what this dance routine was about, despite understanding the introduction. I knew I would have a hard time painting a complete picture, so I took some video: 

Undoukai

Today was Reiko's sports competition (運動会). I don't remember ever doing anything like it when I was in elementary school. Anyway, the premise is this: the entire elementary school is split into two teams, red and white. The two teams compete in multiple serious and county fair-type sports to win. It also involves brief dancing interludes. I defy you to find something cuter than a few hundred children dancing while wearing matching hats.

Above is a shot of what Reiko calls "The Old People Dance." I thought it looked pretty fun, but apparently it's usually done by older people, and is therefore mortifying to perform when you're only in the sixth grade. They invited parents to dance with their children, so my host mother joined in, too.

One of the non-sports was this "chicken"-type battle. Three kids (separated by gender), would support another one on their hands. They would send ten teams of these four kids from each side. The goal was to rip off the hat of the kids on top. Children in red hats went after children in white hats, and vice versa. There were some great moments of surprise hat grabbing from behind. There was also a lot of arm smacking. It seemed a little violent, but also like the kind of thing I would have loved when I was eleven.

After that was another, all-grade competition. I didn't fully understand, but I think the objective was to keep the ball from hitting the ground for as long as possible. It was the kind of thing that requires some precision. In other words, it went flying into the groups of nearby parents about every thirty seconds.

Near the end of the day, the sixth graders had a cheer competition. It was pretty cool, actually. They had two boys, one from each team, stand at the microphones. They barked out encouragement with their hands behind their backs and wearing what I think is the traditional clothing for the class cheer leaders. Here's Reiko cheering for the white team (she spent the past two weeks making her own pom poms): 

Take me out to the ballgame...

We went out to a baseball game yesterday. The local team is the Chunichi Dragons, and this weekend was our one chance to see them in the Nagoya Dome. It's a huge building. We were on the fifth floor, three rows from the top and the ceiling of the dome. My eyes were only good enough to find the baseball about 75% of the time.

All of the fans had these matching hollow, plastic bats that they would bang together. The fans were much more energetic than the spectators at the baseball games I've been to recently in the U.S. There's an incredible degree of organization. There are specific cheers for several Dragons players and plays, as well as the basic Japanese baseball cheers. It took us all a while to pick up on what people were saying, but by about the fourth inning, we had joined in on the near continuous cheering. There were four solid innings in which no one scored, so chanting and learning the various hollow bat cadences kept us occupied. 

From left to right: Anne, Ellen, me, Jessica, Stephen.

The food was also quite a bit different. Tacos are notoriously bad here, so we avoided the taco stand. The typical baseball food: hot dogs, nachos, etc., was all expensive, so I opted for okonomiyaki. I tried to make okonomiyaki for my parents once, sort of unsuccessfully, and I've been dissecting it every time I eat in the hope that I'll figure out how to duplicate it back in the U.S. I don't know if eating okonomiyaki and green tea soft serve is the authentic Japanese baseball dining experience, but I was pretty pleased with it.

Here's a video of the opposing team cheering.  It captures the crowd energy pretty well.

I definitely got the impression, with the number of people who showed up to the game and the enthusiasm of the crowd, that baseball is a big deal here. I in fact rode a Chunichi Dragons themed train to the Nagoya Dome. It's dark blue with players with intent expressions in the middle of epic pitches and unbelievable catches. There are player profiles above the seats, where the advertisements normally are. It's kind of refreshing to be in a city that's really into its sports, or at least one of its sports.

Toyota Kaikan

We went on a tour of the Toyota Plant on today. Nanzan carted a group of fifty students to the one of the factories. We weren't allowed to the take pictures. I'd never been to an auto plant before, and it was a pretty cool experience. The cars were welded by Terminator-cum-Matrix machines, and I was fascinated by the assembly line. Seeing how many different machines, people, and stages are involved in producing just one car was incredible. It makes me want to take an auto class. But I'm now also a little nervous about cars, knowing all the ways in which something could go wrong.

We also went on a tour of Toyota Kaikan, which was basically a bunch of exhibits on Toyota's view of the future. There was the unsurprising "the Prius is good for the environment!" exhibit, the exhibit on how safe Toyota cars are, etc. There were a future interesting vehicles, like this silver chair car that looks like something from Minority Report. 

In the lobby, there was a trumpet playing robot. He seems relatively famous, and there was a video loop of him playing with an orchestra. We got to see the last performance of the day (which I took video of, but wasn't able to upload).

Here's me with the trumpet playing robot:

One of Toyota's concept cars was the one below. I don't remember the name, but they presented it this year. It's the lightest car in the world. 

There was also a showroom of Toyota and Lexus cars. The only appropriate thing to do was climb into the convertible and take pictures. 

New flash! I am Speed Racer:

Osu Kannon and Sakae

It was a pretty relaxed weekend. I spent Saturday afternoon in the Osu Kannon (大須観音) area. Osu Kannon is a reconstruction of a 16th century temple. But what the area is better known for among the other exchange students (留学生) is the thrift shopping and bi-monthly flea market. It's a little bit like Akihabara. There’s several blocks of alleys with stores on each side. Aside from clothing, they sell touristy things and electronics. It’s over a mile long from one end to the other. A lot of the clothing in Osu Kannon is sold by weight, so poor students can go a little crazy getting Japanese clothing. There’s one store in particular that sells kimonos and all the associated gear for pretty reasonable prices.

All I bought was a couple souvenirs to take back to the U.S., but walking through the alley system was an adventure. I also found this music venue called Electric Lady Land. It looks like they’re going to have some pretty interesting, non-J-pop bands coming through, so I’m going to coerce some people into going to a concert with me.

Diana texted me while I was out shopping to say that a bunch of people were going to Sakae （栄）　that night, so I took the train over. I hadn’t been to Sakae at night yet, and that’s definitely the best time of day to see it (photos to come). We went to a club that my host mother later told me all of the exchange students somehow end up at, ID CafÈ. It has five floors of music, and an intimidating number of people. The hip hop floor was Westerner central. More specifically, it had a noticeable number of Western guys with their Japanese girlfriends. I don’t know where all these other foreigners have been hiding for two weeks, but I know where all them are on Saturday nights.

The cell phones are kind of space age as compared with American ones. You can watch television for free, you can send each other pictograms and animated text messages, and you can exchange phone numbers and email addresses via infrared. I bought my phone last week, and it was surprisingly easy. I didn’t want to take my chances on negotiating a phone contract with someone in Japanese, so I wandered into the SoftBank store intent on finding an English-speaking clerk.

I waltzed up to the first person I found, this clerk who had been moving closer slowly when he saw that I was a foreigner. I blurted out, “Eigo ga hanaseru hito ha imasuka?” (“Is there a person here who speaks English?”)

He gave me the thumbs up and said, “Me!”

Immediately after he said that, I noticed that he had a large, obvious button on his shirt that said, “I speak English.” Such is life.

Sushi and Wii

My host family and I went out for conveyer belt sushi this week. I’d forgotten how completely different it is from American sushi. I’m kicking myself for not having taken pictures. But there was a lot less seaweed and a lot more fish. My host father kept ordering more, and we kept grabbing plates. I hadn’t known that it was considered rude to eat a piece of sushi in more than one bite. What followed this realization was an hour struggling to eat finger-long pieces of fish whole. But once I got the hang of it, I had an awesome time.

My host family likes to joke that the sushi has endowed me with Japanese speaking powers. Every time I master a new grammar point or successfully explain what’s happening on a television show, the response is, “Must be the sushi. It has made you more Japanese.”

Speaking of getting the hang of things, there’s something I’m still shaky on: Wii. My host sister showed me how to play Wii. To say that she owned me in Wii Sports would be an understatement. Reiko and I went through every single sport, all of which was met with epic failure on my part. In tennis, I could make my character fly around the screen and make physically impossible, unhelpful leaps. Making her hit the tennis ball, though, was something that eluded me for a good fifteen minutes. I was actually doing pretty well (meaning I could operate the controller) in golf until we got to the archipelago hole. I could make it to the second island, and eventually the third. After five balls flying into the side of the last island, Wii recommended that I give up.

First Sunday

Finding a Catholic church in Nagoya was surprisingly easy. There's a famous one in Sakae (the major shopping and eating area), and a smaller one within biking distance of my house. There aren't any afternoon masses here, so I had to fight my way awake to get to the 9 a.m. one on time. I decided to try going to mass (ミサ) in Japanese, at least for the first week.

It was a small church with a kindergarten attached. Since my religious vocabulary is pretty slim, I understood about a third of what was going on. Aside from getting the G-stare* from one of the altar boys, it was a pretty great experience. I was out of dress code, though: All the other women were wearing these beautiful, white lace veils over their hair. I'd never seen it before, but all of the veils throughout the congregation was an amazing visual. One of the nuns told me where I can buy one after mass, though, so I'll be super-prepared next week.

My host mother picked me up and took me to the local coffee shop. The guys who work there were hilarious, so I think I'll probably end up biking over there a lot. Since I have no idea how far things are in kilometers, I've had to resort to the plane scale. So if I said somewhere in the US was about an hour from my house by plane, they would give me a comparable plane ride from Nagoya to other places. So I still have no concept of kilometers, but I'm an expert on Japanese plane travel times.

We went for lunch with my host mother's mother, and we walked to a nearby park called Shiritori Garden (白鳥庭園). It's a tea garden, but the actual tea ceremony cottage, which extends out into the middle of the pond, was closed for a special ceremony. It's a completely quiet even though it's in the middle of the city. There are some visual reminders that you're in a modern area, though, like in the picture on the right:

My host mother and her mother decided to stay in the shade while Reiko and I explored. We went by a waterfall, and ended up at the edge of the pond, where some children were feeding koi. They were dropping pellets in the water and the carp went crazy. About ten close to the bank, and as soon as the pellets appeared and the first koi started fighting each other, literally hundreds of koi from all over the garden would swim over. They were splashing water everywhere, swimming over each other, and fighting their way to the center as more joined the fray. I'm kicking myself for not having taken video, because a picture doesn't adequately express how weird it was. The picture below is of about a fourth of the koi pack. Please note that the dark areas are made not of water, but of black koi.

The beginning of the frenzy:

We found out later where the kids were getting all the food. There's a little hut with cups of green pellets and instructions to feed the birds. Under no circumstances, it says, are you to feed the koi. And so of course that natural reaction for the kids was to feed the carp and find out why it was a bad idea.

My host sister, Reiko, looking at some of the more sedate koi. Even when you don't have food, they come to the edge of the water just in case:

I'll be setting up a Flickr account soon so I can post more photos.

What I'm listening to:
Happiness - 嵐
Rebel Rebel - David Bowie
Digital Love (Daft Punk cover) - Alphabeat
Great Balls of Fire - Chuck Berry
Wake Up - Arcade Fire

*G-stare:　When a Japanese person stares at a foreigner (gaijin). It happens occasionally on the street, and a lot on the train. It's like being a B-list celebrity or having a hand growing out of my forehead. I don't know which.