成人式 Coming of Age

Instead of reporting for work at the city office today, Horiguchi-san and I got up early to travel all the way to Ushibuka (牛深, the second largest town on Amakusa) for the town’s annual Coming of Age Ceremony “Seijinshiki” 成人式.  When Japanese youngsters turn 20 (why am I calling them youngsters if they are only 2 years older than me?  Probably because I can’t take them very seriously because most of them sport really outrageous hairstyles.  Come on, guys; if you have to wake up before your female friends to do your hair in the morning, you know there’s a problem...), they return to their hometowns and have a little ceremony where a lot of educational officials, past teachers, and some of the students themselves give speeches, pass on words of encouragement, or reminisce about old times.  My only job was to sit their, look important, and pass out information packets to all of the youngsters who were attending the ceremony. 

While my Japanese, and my attention span, were not good enough for me to follow all of the speeches in the ceremony, I could tell from the general reaction of the audience that I was not missing too much.  Luckily, the ceremony ended with a Haiya dance performance, Amakusa's famous traditional dance to celebrate each year's good fishing season.  (see video clip on facebook)

For the first time in a while, I also got to hang out with other JETs and enjoy, guess what, another fire works festival.  This would be number 3. Though I think I've had my fill of fireworks festivals by now, it was a nice experience to have English speaking people around to enjoy it with, to be surprised by having live entertainment before the show (just a single piano player/singer who performed for 30 minutes straight before the fireworks; not bad) and to be able to go out to a bar afterwards and enjoy some snacks.   The pizza was even pretty good, which is always a surprise in Japan where they don't really understand 'cheese' and 'crust' concepts very well.

Downer almost-ending: since my driver did indulge in alcohol that evening, we had to stay the night at George's apartment in Ushibuka, the ALT stationed there, and wake up early the next morning to drive me back to Takahama.  

Artificial better-ending: next year in April we Amakusa JETs get to be in the haiya dancing festival...:)