I cranked myself out of bed Sunday morning fairly early with a pretty good headache. It was probably from all the different drinks that I had at the house party last night. While we ate lots of nabe and sat and talked I drank two glasses of Aomori, two glasses of sake, two glasses of red wine and one glass of white, and a beer. It’s not the amount that got me, just the diversity of weird things in my stomach.
First thing I did was to go to Ito Yokado to buy socks for my new matsuri outfit. Last night they delivered some brand new official matsuri clothes for me to wear. One of the wives demonstrated how to wear it, and so I was pretty sure I could figure it out. I got the socks and came back, and Kuniko told me that the master had called and wanted me to go to Denya right away. I took off and met the gang in front of the yakitori, and then we went inside and they helped me get dressed into the outfit.
There was a white undershirt, some white pants that tied around the waist, some white tabi shoes with soles built into the bottom, and then a wool wrap that I wore around my midsection to keep me warm. The wool wrap doubled as a pocket to carry my valuables, so it was quite useful. Over the whole thing I wore a colorful happi, sporting the bright orange and blue colors of the area we were representing. The collar said that I was a member of the fireman’s group – but I was just borrowing it, so it was no big deal.
The master bought me a rice ball from the convenience store next door, and then we walked to the matsuri. The crowds were building, and we walked by some of the other groups on our way down to find our other members. I got a lot of stares, especially since I was wearing the traditional outfit. The last two years I just threw on the happi, but this time I looked like I was serious about it.
We went all the way to the harbor and stood around by the sea, dipping our toes in, drinking sake out of paper cups, and then we all headed up to meet up with the mikoshi (portable shrine). Once we got there somebody had a case of beer that they distributed around to people, and so some folks had sake in one hand and beer in the other. Police vans full of cops drove slowly by on the way to the matsuri to provide security, but they didn’t seem to mind that everyone was sitting around drinking in public at ten in the morning.
At first the shrine is on a rolling platform, which works great for moving it around on flat surfaces, but once we got inside the shrine grounds, we removed it from the platform, and then carried it around the shrine. The first time around went so smoothly, I couldn’t remember why it had seemed like such a difficult chore the last two years. During our trip around, lots of people were pointing and staring at me, and I heard lots of talking about me. I had plenty of old guys around to give me advice, and at one point somebody stuck a TV camera in my face. I posed for a few pictures for some photographers, and I was somewhat of a minor celebrity, if not a major curiosity.
We had some time to kill in between laps around the main building of the shrine, so we walked around, talked to some people, and had some lunch at a restaurant across the street. Everything was going great, and it seemed like it was going to be a really easy day.
We went in for the second lap, and everybody grabbed the mikoshi and we set off. This time, it went really poorly. First off, everybody seemed to be a lot weaker – in the back corner they kept dropping it. Our leaders, instead of mixing the people around and moving stronger people there, just kept toughing it out. Then at one point we dropped the mikoshi hard and it came down on some poor guy’s ankle. Everybody started calling for an ambulance, and then instead of giving the guy space to breathe, people crowded around him. The police helped a little bit, but they seemed a little confused. Then, while the guy is still on the ground waiting for the ambulance, a couple of fights broke out between our drunken guys and some people in the crowd. Then a couple of our own guys were pushing and shoving. They finally got the injured guy out of there, and so we continued on, but there were more and more fights. The policemen would come and prevent them from fighting, but they wouldn’t do anything else. In the end they had to take some of our guys away, and that left even fewer people to carry the mikoshi.
It was another hour or so before we could get the mikoshi back to where we started, and by that time, I had had about enough of carrying around portable shrines. On the way back we had bumped into the branches of a cherry tree and rather than move the mikoshi around it, one of the Denya gang had torn the branches down in a brutally impromptu pruning session.
By that time, Kuniko, Antoine and Miwako had arrived, so we got to chat a little bit. This was Antoine’s first real matsuri, so it was interesting to get his thoughts on it all. Kuniko had taken a few pictures of the events while I was lugging the mikoshi around, and she got to hear people all around her pointing and talking about me while she watched anonymously.
While the four of us walked around the matsuri, Kuniko bumped into some of her students. I stayed away – Kuniko is trying to keep me a secret from her students. Unfortunately they sniffed out the truth, and so I introduced myself to them and they were sufficiently shocked that I am sure the whole school will know about it tomorrow.
Rather than stick around for the evening lap we all went back to our place and I took a shower while they sat around and talked. From there we headed to the closest okonomiyaki restaurant and had a feast. We sat and talked and ate, and then moved to 31 flavors in Ito Yokado for a dessert session. At around 8 o’clock Antoine and Miwako headed home in Miwako’s car – and we headed back to our place. Before we could get there the master called and wanted me to bring along my happi to return it. He said that it would be my last chance to carry the mikoshi, and although I was mentally finished carrying the mikoshi, it seemed like we should head over there.
We got there and had to wait for a little while for the master and the mikoshi to show up. It was back on it’s wheels, and full of kids when it arrived. I was relieved to see that the barn where the mikoshi is stored had wheel grooves that matched the wheels on the mikoshi platform – we could just push it right in there. The master said I should put on the happi and help put it inside, so I dutifully donned the happi and stepped up to the mikoshi with the other members, still wearing the clean nice clothes that I had changed into after my shower.
You can imagine my shock when everyone pulled the heavy mikoshi off the wheels and started bouncing it around on our bruised shoulders again. Kuniko was sitting there waiting for me, and I decided that I had enough – it looked like they were going to take a while before they put it in. I returned my happi to it’s owner, and we drove home from there.
Kuniko was nice enough to massage my bruised shoulder, and then we crashed out. What an exhausting day – and I have to go to work tomorrow…