Haiya Dance Festival

There is one event that draws people from all over Japan to our humble Amakusa islands: the Ushibuka Haiya Festival.

Ushibuka, the second largest city in Amakusa located at the southernmost point, is an important port for large fishing boats.  Come spring, the people of Ushibuka pray for another year of big catches 大漁 by dancing the Haiya dance. This dance, which has been danced by the people of Ushibuka for centuries upon centuries, is thought to be one of the most important dances in the traditional Japanese dance repertoire.  Dancing groups from all around the country come to perform in the festival and compete for prizes.  We JETs, though not professional dancers, are lucky enough to be able to dance with the locals in one of the dance parades during the festival.

While some people do take the dance competition very seriously, for most people it is an excuse to party, get drunk, and dance around in the streets.  People start 'pre-gaming' from the early afternoon, then don their outfits and line up for the parade.  As we were filling into the parade line, people from all sides of the street were hanging out their windows, cheering to us and offering us sake and beer (a few of us did actually jump away from the dancing line to receive a drink). A very festive atmosphere indeed.

I'm not exactly sure which haiya dance is the 'real' haiya dance because every group in the parade has their own variation.  I posted a video on facebook of one haiya dance performance I saw many months back in Ushibuka;  that one is probably the most authentic of them all.  Our dance was much simpler, with only about three basic motions, one of which involves stepping forwards while pretending to row a boat and another of which requires you to act liking your pulling a fishing net.  Even with the fairly simple moves, it took all of my concentration to do it right for the two hours that we danced.  I saw some of my co-workers and neighbors in the crowd, but I was totally incapable of doing anything but smiling at them because my brain was completely focused on dancing.  It was quite mesmerizing, but really fun.  I felt that I did pretty well in doing the steps, but still messed up numerous times when I made attempts at looking around or talking to people in the crowd.  Our leaders, all JETs who have been in Amakusa for more than two years now, did a great job of riling up us and the crowd and putting their own whacky spins on the dance routine.  In a scary way, that's going to have to be me next year because I'm one of the few JETs staying;  most of the current JETs in Amakusa are second or third years who will be returning to their home countries soon.  

If anyone wants to participate in a great Japanese tradition and act really wild and crazy while dancing in the streets, come next year in April to Amakusa!

Pottery Post #1

Here's an easy way to get back into my blogging rhythm (no smart comments about how it never existed!): blog with photos.

So in case you didn't know,  I'm currently taking pottery classes twice a month in 鬼池 Oniike, about 50 minutes away from my village, with another JET who lives in that area.  Our instructor is a retired English teacher who took up his father's profession of pottery and now teaches several classes a week, while still spending time to produce his own works for exhibition and sale.

While I took a class sophomore on the Japanese Tea Ceremony (one of my favorite classes I took at Swat), and learned a bit about pottery there, I never had any hands on experience with until I came to Japan.  I can say with certainty that I'm not that good, but I definitely have gotten better since I started.  Unfortunately, most of the works which I can say I'm proud of have not been fired yet, so I can't show them to you now.  Here are some of my first works.

My instructions were to build up rings straight up into the air as tall as I could.  You can see the results for yourself.  I think I saved the work a little by picking a shiny blue glaze that will distract from the unsightly misshapen form of this vase.  Trying to prevent the clay from widening near the top was tough.  In general, it was difficult to keep the form consistent as it got taller and taller.  How are you supposed to get your hands inside?

My first attempt at a bowl.  I don't know why I'm showing this, as their is not much to be proud of.  The shape is whack; the color dull and consistent.  The teacher showed me how to pinch the edges right to be level and of uniform shape, but I didn't really get it until later.

This one's a little worthy of showing to you.   I got better and keeping the edges fairly level as I built it up from the base.  Keeping the outside smooth seemed to be easier this time around as well, but I sort of obsessed to much on the lip and the smoothness of the inside and outside to notice that the whole thing was spreading out to much and that the bottom was getting to big and flat.  I think I've learned not to forget about that part and to work a little faster so the clay doesn't dry out so much, but I've still got a ways to go before I can make perfectly symmetrical bowls.  When glazing, I tried to be artistic with the pattern inside the bowl by tilting the bowl so as to let the glaze run in certain directions on the inside.  It sorta worked.

When I came to class one week, I thought to myself beforehand "I want to try making rectangular plates." My teacher said to me at the start of the session "What do you want to make today?  Plates?"  "Yes." That's how it happened.

  

I have seven of these guys.  They're quite easy and fun to make.  You tie several knots in a strong and then run the string through the clay to cut your slab.  Along the way, you can make undulating patterns by moving the string back and forth to make groves with the knots in the string.  My patterns aren't as cool as the ones my teacher did, but still cool enough that he showed my works to some of his students in another class.  I also got to apply the white slip with a big brush made of dried grasses.  Attempts at making the brush strokes artistic had mixed results, though it was really fun doing it even though I had no idea what I was doing.  I guess I should say I enjoyed pretending I knew what I was doing.

I still have two Christmas mugs, a miniature Japanese samurai helmet, a rabbit for Chinese New Year, and a tea bowl waiting to be fired and finished.