...Happy Thanksgiving! how was the turkey? instead of the bird, i gobbled back pork yakitori, choco-banana crepes, candy apples, mochi, and bbqued corn on the cob (which I got for 300 instead of 500 yen by winning at "rock, paper, scissors" called junken here) as I strolled the hundreds of food stalls lining NAGASAKI streets. I love festival time! Nagasaki e ikimashita, totemo tanishokatta desu. Tsukareta desu ne! Just got back from yet another 3-day week-end o` fun, down in beautiful Nagasaki city, on the southwest corner of Kyushu Island. Saturday, from 9 to 9, we revisited the past. At the Peace Park, we strolled past statues donated from countries from around the world - Argentina, Cuba, and China were just some of them. The A-bomb museum was the most informative museum I have ever been to. The pictures and videos of the city before and after the tragedy were stunning. They had personal stories of men losing whole families, kids surviving burns to most of their bodies, and a church being destroyed while mass was on - Catholicism was brought over by the Europeans. The hypocentre (the exact point where the bomb was dropped) was eerie: behind glass they had preserved the actual earth, with rubble and shattered building pieces, from when the bomb hit (Did you know the bomb was meant for the Mitsubishi Shiyards but was mistakenly dropped on to a thriving neighborhood?) We also saw a one-legged archway to a shrine, (the entire thing was blown to bits except for the one leg), a handful of massive temples, and a site dedicated to the twelve Christian matyrs who died in the 16th-century when Christianity was banned in all of Japan. The destruction and loss that penetrated the city on August 9th, 1945 is still felt today, but the city has amazingly recovered and i fell in love with it. Strangely, the world still hasn`t learned its lesson and goes on destroying more lives and beauty today.
To prove how incredible human energy can be, the annual NAGASAKI KUNCHI was held over three-days, one of Japan`s biggest festivals. Heaps of foreigners and utterly millions of Japanese tourists were out in full force, going by cheap tram (just like San Fran), by bus, or by foot to flit about the city and catch the highlights (elbows up through the crowds, like Dad showed me at home during fireworks time). Dragon-dancing, drawn from China, and Dutch costumed performers celebrate Nagasaki's unique acceptance of foreigner traders (as long as they weren't Christian missionaries). The impact they made on the city`s economy and architecture was grand. I loved all the tiny Japanese kids in the parade - amazed by how long they could play taiko drums on the floats while being twirled around by loin-clothed men pushing the wheeled-shrine in a sweeping circle to the applause of thousands. Kids also hoisted their own mini-dragon - oretty well kawaii. The costumes were incredible, and the white painted faces on the geisha characters were gorgeous and finely made. Nagasaki is a must-see, I would say, on any Japanese itenerary. It offers a place of serenity and beauty, amongst the world's chaos; its people offer hope and a spirit that can never be extinguished, even by the most powerful and dishonorable of weaponary, the atomic bomb.
We had to train it in Sunday night at midnight, since the first morning trains don`t start until 5, after my Taiko lesson (which deserves a place in this paragraph, since i got a free UKATA, a cotton kimono, from my favorite and genkiest taiko lady, Tsusumi-san. She bought beautiful blue flowery ukatas, complete with obi, purse, and the special shoes, for Lindsay and I. Man, is she ever getting a nice omiyage gift when i return from Canada).
Back to the festivites, so we had to kill the wee morning hours somehow, and managed to see "I Am Sam" until 3 am (a special showing to keep the festival-goers awake). It worked. We then indulged in famous Hakata Ramen at the river food stalls, with an Asahi or two on the side, and proceeded to the city shrine along with a couple other thousand festival-goers. it was still dark at this point, but the excitement and the butt cheeks were increasing by the minute - yes, this was a men`s festival, and yes, they wore their loin clothes proudly! I got a close-up pic, hope to make you laugh with it soon :) The participants were of all ages, as young as 2 sitting on their daddy`s shoulders - totemo kawaii desu ne!
Once the festival started, hundreds of costumed men rushed past the sidewalk crunched crowd, some carrying wooden signs or flags, marking their team (there were 7 in all). Then came the yamakasa floats. These things were HUGE! Each weighed a ton and about 15-20 men had to push it forward using wooden poles jutting from the bottom of it, racing against the clock. The last float was my favorite, a towering mass of colourful figures, including a smoke-blowing dragon. By then the sun was up, it was 6 am, and time to catch the 1-hr train ride back to Tosu to head to work by 8!