akiya matsuri

So why am I showing you this photo of a little truck full of drummers with an accompanying flute player, or should I say flautist, and a fine array of tissue paper flowers? Bear with me a moment. It was a busy day.

It started out with M's mom, and Y,  K, and Y2,  M's friends, who stayed the night in order to make the trip to the Nagai fishing port's morning market, which--if you remember a previous post--takes place on the 2nd Saturday of each month. M had to take little m to the start of the local festival (in which m was going to get her start at carrying the mikoshi, the portable shrine around the neighborhood). So I drove M's mom, and Y and K down the coast to the port only to find that the incredibly nasty wind and rain of the night before (which had almost aborted my bike ride from the station to the house) had stopped the fishing boats from doing any damage to the society of fishes. In other words, the market was shuttered, and we had to make do with the regular fresh fish store--where we ended up buying 7 sardines, 4 kamasu, 8 sea urchins, 12 big hamaguri clams, 6 scallops, 1 steamed octopus and 7 lunch packs of octopus rice, plus cucumbers, etc., blah, blah, blah, at a price slightly higher than we would have paid at the market.

Got home, ate the octopus rice and tracked down the progress of m's portable shrine. This year was a big one for Akiya: there were, I think, 5 of them--one for little kids, one for little bigger kids, one for teenage girls, one for teenage boys, and one for the adults. (Take my word for it. The teenage girls kicked ass. Made the teenage boys look like total wimps, and the adults look like they were playing catch up all day.) 

 

We caught up with m's shrine when they were taking a break. (The kids carry the mikoshi from 10 to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, so there are plenty of breaks for food and drink. I'm not sure the kids need it but the adults use all the break time to catch up on their lack of alcohol and conversation over the past year.) 

m was very proud that she was already hurting from hoisting the shrine palanquin on her shoulders.

See, she's already got the mix of arrogance, self-importance and cool that is so important for young women at festivals. (She doesn't quite have the callus yet, though, that shrine carrying fanatics get from hoisting the beams on their shoulders. I knew one guy who used to travel all over the country to the big festivals and whose permanent callus rose an inch or two out of his shoulder. I almost expected the growth to grow a head, and start talking, like the character in the movie How to Get Ahead in Advertising.)

But she quickly had to get back to her palanquin hoisting.

Which brings us back to the  photo at the beginning of this post. That little truck with the drummers and the flowers? Well, I helped make those flowers. 

Not really make them, to be honest. But two weeks ago, m and M went to the local fish union building--or to be more specific, house--and folded colored tissues and tied them to the colored rods. And last week, I and m went back to the union where we sat around on the tatami floor with other families and unfolded the tissues into those flowers, while listening to music from the quintessential Shonan beach band, the Southern All Stars. 

So I did my part, I guess, which made me feel less guilty about leaving M and m with the mikoshi, and going back to the house, where I stoked the barbecue and M's mom, Y, Y2 and K and I cooked the sardines, clams, etc. and emptied wine bottles for several hours until the shrine parade made its way around to our part of the village--in fact right down the beach in front of our house.

As always they end up taking the mikoshi into the sea . . .

 . . . before getting totally knackered and finishing up by carrying it back to the shrine. I've done this twice in my life when I much younger and it was the closest thing to doing drugs that I've ever experienced. The chanting, the physical strain and the repetition (not to mention the alcohol every 200 meters) just takes you to a different place. You can see it in the eyes of these guys. They have no idea where they are.

m caught on very quick, and we heard her chastising some of the boys who were goofing off to "quit playing around and do your part!" In a few years from now, I believe, she's going to be leading the teenage girl group in continuing to kick the ass of the other groups. She's got it in her eyes.