When you don’t have any means of communication, every visitor to your home is unexpected. Last Monday, I had planned to attempt a trip to Nagasaki City for Obon, a festival for the dead. Then, the day before, it started raining. And it rained. And it rained. And the next morning, when I got up, it was still raining, harder than ever. Given that the trip was going to be tricky under perfect conditions, I was ready to give up, but just as I started feeling sorry for myself, somebody rang the doorbell. In burst three of my fellow JETs, headed for Obon, intent on picking me up. So two hours later, I was in Nagasaki City, trying to figure out exactly what Obon entails.
As it turns out, Obon is as much about fireworks as it is remembering the dead. This is especially true when you don’t speak Japanese but do know how to use a lighter. Basically, neighborhoods all over Nagasaki build giant wooden floats, then put a generator on board that powers dozens of lights. Many of these lights come in the form of Japanese lanterns like these. Then, people from the neighborhoods all over the city push these floats through the streets down to a central point by the harbor. Apparently, the festival used to culminate in burning these floats en masse on site, but it created too much smoke and people complained, so now they use heavy machinery to dismantle the floats and smash them to pieces, after which the remains are taken someplace outside the city and set ablaze.
We were staying with an older American guy who–in addition to being an awesome dude and gracious host–happens to have lived in Nagasaki City for 20+ years and is well-liked by his neighbors. Thus, when we showed up with him, the old men who run the neighborhood association insisted we join in. They gave us all headbands and traditional happi to wear (it looked something like this, only white and less ornate). Finally, they gave a couple of us red sashes and lighters, and we were informed that we would be what I think translates as “light-bearers.” As you can guess, our job was to light things on fire. (Note: Because of the rain, I didn’t bring my camera, but there was one picture of me taken in this getup. As soon as I get a copy, I’ll make it available to the public, and we can let the ridicule begin).
A couple of shots of sake later, it was time to start the show. The procession is led by the older men, who walk alongside a gong mounted on wheels and bang the shit out of it, ostensibly to tell the people pushing the float where to go but mostly because obviously, if you have a gong, that shit’s gonna get banged. Meanwhile, the younger people are alternating between pushing the float and setting off firecrackers. We were told by the head of the neighborhood association not to throw them at people, but evidently, that’s the only rule, because they were going off more or less continuously for miles along the parade route. This is loud. I had earplugs and was glad of it, although I was told that this year was muted somewhat by comparison because of the rain, which fell throughout the festival. Regardless, we pushed the float down to the harbor, stopping periodically to drink beers out of a cooler mounted inside it. Arriving at the harbor is pretty majestic because you can see the hundreds of other floats rolling in from around the city.
After taking apart the float, we were invited back to the banquet hall for dinner, which was pretty tasty assortment of traditional Japanese foods. Also, surprise, they had enough beer to fuel a sign-slapping rampage (given the circumstances, I kept it together). We got drunk with some old guys and went back to our host’s place, where he showed us pictures from Burning Man–he goes every year–while his 10-year-old son played some Facebook version of Sim City. (Note: His son was not drunk).
The next night, back in Kazusa, I went to the town’s slightly smaller-scale Obon celebration. No floats, but lots of fireworks, both amateur and municipal. I had inherited some fireworks from one of the departing ALTs, so I brought them down to Maehama and lit them off with a bunch of the area kids. Then, the real fireworks show started, and although it was small by Fourth-of-July-on-the-Charles standards, it was more enjoyable because you didn’t have to stake out a space hours in advance to be comfortable. Plus, with a smaller crowd, they could set them off much closer to us, so they looked fucking huge. I am an idiot and didn’t bring my camera so you’ll have to take that at face value.
Even after all this excitement, I still had one more day of summer vacation left, so I went hiking on Wednesday. Or, I tried to. I was out tooling around on the mountain behind my house for a few hours, but kept getting foiled by trails that ended abruptly without going much of anywhere. The trails around here are blazed rather haphazardly and suffer from a lack of maintenance, so every time I found one that looked promising, it would peter out after a mile or so. I’ll ask around before I try again.
On Thursday, I made my first visit to a Japanese person’s house. One of my neighbors invited me to join him and the outgoing ALT–my predecessor–for dinner. Despite the fact that I was an hour late–thanks, Docomo–he was remarkably understanding (I think my predecessor, who speaks Japanese well, covered for me). He’s a really friendly guy, and seems intent on helping me learn Japanese, although this is a little tricky since I really need to develop stronger fundamentals before I can benefit from extended conversations with a native speaker. We were over at dinner for about four hours and I think I reasonably understood maybe 15% of the conversation–even that is probably generous. Then, today, I stopped by to say hello and he insisted I go with him with to a car dealership to look at a used car he has deemed a bargain. This was a little awkward because while he knows I want a car–we talked about it at dinner–he doesn’t understand that I have no intention of buying a car. Renting is more expensive, but it’s much more convenient, and for that I’m willing to pay a premium. Not wanting to be rude (especially after being so late to dinner), I obliged him and went, “just to look.” The car looked fine, and I’m sure he’s right that it would be cheaper to buy than to rent, but that just isn’t my be all and end all. Next time I’ll be a little more forceful in explaining my priorities. All in all, though, he seems like a good guy to know, and he did bake me some delicious bread on Friday.
On Friday, before my Docomo debacle, I finally got to deliver my self-introduction to the students. They had a little assembly where the Principal introduced me and I gave a two-minute speech about myself in Japanese. It was pretty basic–my name, where I’m from, what I like to do and eat, as well as some other pleasantries–but I did try to put in a couple of lines that would amuse the students. As you may have heard, consensus is a big deal in Japan, so they have a lot of ways built into the language that you can appeal for consensus. One of which is to end a sentence with the particle “ne,” which basically solicits agreement from the listener (“Atsui des ne?” It’s hot, isn’t it?). This sentence form gets used a lot in conversation but not in something like a speech. So, thinking I was being clever, I slipped one in, hoping it might get a laugh or at least make things seem less formal. Specifically, I said, “Watashi no oki ni iri no tabemono wa kara’age des. Oishii des ne?” This means, “My favorite food is fried chicken. It’s delicious, isn’t it?” Fucking crickets and 194 blank faces staring back at me. Fucked up, right, because those kids have no qualms about pointing and laughing in my face at all other times of the day? But I try to make an actual joke and suddenly it’s a tough crowd at open mic night. Anyway, for what it’s worth, the teachers all seemed to think I did a decent job, and I got invited out to lunch with them. We went and ate champon, which is one of Nagasaki’s signature dishes: lots of seafood piled together in a broth. It was pretty good.
Over the weekend, I passed my first real test on the Chuck Town Racer, a trip up the coast to Minamiarima that was about 15 miles or so round-trip. I went on Saturday to visit a buddy who lives up there and then stayed overnight. We went for a run, then went to a yakiniku for dinner. Yakiniku is a restaurant where you order raw meats and grill them yourself on a little table stove. Delicious, and after 8pm, half-price beers. The next day, we fought off a hangover and soldiered out the door to go on a bus tour of Minamishimabara, sponsored by the local government. I know nothing sounds worse than hoping on a bus early in the morning after a night of drinking, but it was free, and actually fairly interesting (albeit three hours too long). The coolest thing we saw was the Mt. Unzen disaster museum, which has a lot of wild stuff left over from the eruptions that devastated the area from 1990 to 1995, when the volcano was active. This included the remains of an old elementary school as well as an entire neighborhood buried up to the rooftops in deposits from pyroclastic flow, preserved in its entirety.
This is my longest post–trying to get y’all up to speed–but before I end it, I want to bring up one other thing. File this under Curiosities of Japan:
While nobody here speaks English very well, everybody wears clothing with English writing. It’s amazing to me how ubiquitous this is and how truly rare it is to find a shirt or jacket with actual Japanese characters. I’ve asked people about this, and the consensus seems to be, people here think English is cool, even if they can’t speak a lick of it. I suppose this phenomenon does have its cultural counterpart in the United States, namely buff dudes getting kanji tatted all over them because it looks cool and foreign. Still, this transcends a trend like that by a mile. The other day, I saw a kid–probably eight-years-old–wearing a shirt that said, “STATE OF ALABAMA: THE HEART OF DIXIE.” Now, there’s just no way this kid could find Alabama on a map, and there’s even less chance he understands the concept behind “Dixie.” And, yet, somehow that shirt made it onto his back out here in the Japanese boondocks. Go figure.
enterthegaijin 
