My Host Dad wishes I was Eric Clapton

In America, most of us are perfectly satisfied seeing fireworks only few times a year.  New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July are maybe the only occasions that most Americans experience fireworks.   In Japan, summer festivals featuring fireworks in some shape or form come at a dime a dozen.  In my first weekend alone I went to two of them, and they were not the only two happening on the island at the time:

After spending a day in Hondo, the largest city on Amakusa, shopping for things for my apartment and then returning to my apartment to clean up and organize, Horiguchi-san’s wife Yumiko took us to her parents’ place in Reihoku, an independent port city at the north western tip of Amakusa. After dinner, a parade passed through the street right in front of their house.  Students from the local school sports teams and both adults and kids from various clubs and organizations passed went by doing little dances and carrying little floats and signs and passing out free fans.  Amakusa is famous for ‘haiya’ dancing, thought to be the foundation of traditional Japanese dance as it is known today, and there is a huge festival in the spring where all of us JETs will get to do haiya dancing in a parade in Ushibuka.  Each town has their own special haiya dance, and I’ve already been lucky enough to see one haiya dance performance at a Coming of Age Ceremony in Ushibuka (more on that, with flip cam videos, later). 

Following the parade, we found all of the usual trappings of a Japanese summer festival: countless booths selling yakiniku (grilled chicken), takoyaki (grilled octopus balls), kakigoori (basically a slushy), drinks, fries, tools for children to annoy their parents (e.g. glowing plastic swords that make noises, waterguns), etc.   Also a staple of summer festivals: the gold fish game!  I’m sure it has a name of its own, but anyone who is familiar with Japanese festivals will know what I’m talking about.  Basically you try to catch little goldfish using only a tiny circular hoop with a piece of paper stretched across it.  It’s incredibly difficult because the paper breaks really easily.  I was not successful.  Supposedly guys are horrible at the game because they tend to be impatient.  Humph.

Rather than watching the fireworks from the festival grounds, we went back to Yumiko’s parents’ place and sat on the boardwalk near their house and watched the fireworks over the water.  The flashes of the fireworks mixed with the flashes of lightning from a storm out at sea, and on the hill overlooking the festival was an old Japanese castle.  On the horizon you could see the lights from Nagasaki prefecture, across the Amakusa sea.  (I plan to go there one day on a ferry from either Reihoku or Hondo.)  The fireworks lasted for what felt like an hour (was it an hour?  in that case it felt like two hours), and they didn’t really use a wide variety of fireworks until the end.  Whatever.  It was still an enjoyable evening.

Day two of my first weekend in Amakusa, I switched to a different host family, the Kikai family in Shimoda (the onsen town next to Takahama).  Whereas Horiguchi-san had only 1 child staying at his house when I was there, his daughter Rina (his other daughter goes to a boarding high school in Kumamoto city), the Kikais had six kids staying in their house at the time, only four of which were there own.  Sadly, the only one who’s name I remember is Toyotaro-kun　豊大郎くん, their only son, because the ‘Toyo’ 豊　in his name is the same as the ‘Toyo’ in ‘Toyotomi Hideyoshi’　豊臣秀吉, famous warlord from the Adzuchimomoyama period 安土桃山時代 that united most of Japan and also invaded Korea from Kyushu, bringing back with him a lot of Korean culture that became embedded into Kyushu culture as well.  An example would be the pottery style used by many potters throughout Kyushu, including the two potters here in Takahama.  If I remember correctly, Koreans baked their pottery at a higher temperature, creating sturdier products with different textures and colorations than older Japanese pottery techniques.  I may be confusing this with another instance when Japan borrowed pottery techniques from Korea/China.  I guess I’ll have to bust out my old Art of the Japanese Tea Ceremony readings and brush up on my Japanese pottery history.

Inside the Izakaya. Not the best picture, but I'm trying NOT to get my host brothers and sisters since they are my students too.

Woops!  Rambled too much there.  Anyway, the Kikais were super awesome, and they also had internet in their house (yes!).  That was the last time I updated my blog.  The night I arrived, all of us went to Hondo to see another fireworks festival and eat dinner at Kikai-san’s friend’s izakaya.  Did I explain izakaya before?  They are basically restaurants were you eat food in many courses and drink in between the courses.  I have yet to surpass two servings of nama-beer (‘raw’ beer?), mostly just because I a.) want to be polite in accepting what is offered to me b.) do not want to get drunk c.) still want to be able to speak Japanese and d.) do not want to be a financial burden as beer is more expensive than Japanese shochu 焼酎　(a clear distilled liquor, which I avoid since it has like 25%+ alcohol content).  Yes, I’ve been placed in a society where all males are expected to drink the same beer throughout the entire summer, even though it has almost no taste whatsoever.  At least it makes it easy to order in a bar：Nama bi-ru ippai onegaishimasu! 生ビール一杯お願いします！You aren’t even given any choice about which brand you want your nama beer from, but that is mostly because all of it is made by Asahi.

The fireworks in Hondo were, in my opinion, better than the ones in Reihoku, but that was to be expected since Hondo is the bigger city.  We also got to watch the fireworks up close from the roof of Kikai-san’s work place, which was located right across the street from the festival.  On the way back, we got stuck in traffic for what felt like an hour, during which time we watched a DVD of Kikai-san’s favorite Eric Clapton concert.  Kikai-san is really into blues and classic rock, and he tries to play on a guitar at home.  He sorta wishes I was Eric Clapton instead of Erik Smith.  Oh well.  What a memory: watching an Eric Claypton concert DVD in a car with six other Japanese kids (all under the age of 14) and my host dad and mom while stuck in traffic following a summer fireworks festival.  

RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE. OK.  I rambled too much.  I’ll have to end things here.  Tune in next time for “In Which Bruce Lee, Toyotaro, and my host dad remind me how to say ‘Killer Stranglehold’ in Japanese.”