Sakura City Festival!

The Fall festivals held around Japan are
decidedly local affairs. Tourists stick to the
big cities, and while the events are clearly
commercialized as all heck - hundreds of
street-front booths selling fried food and
souvenir stuff - the focus is decidedly local,
down to a neighborhood level.

Arrived in Sakura city on saturday around
3pm, which was the start time advertised.
Immediately I saw street stalls leading up
the main road away from the train station.
A few people were making their way up the
hill, so I followed.

20 minutes later, I was sure I had missed
all the fun. Street boths were folding up their
awnings, and cars were scooting down the road.

Then I heard some really loud drumming and
fireworks, and from down a smaller street I
saw a procession of 1 1/2 story high rolling carts
pulled by men and women in costume jackets
(Hanten).

Little did I know that this would start a
constant parade of these carts, and smaller,
carried-on-shoulders shrines that would last
well into the late evening.




















































































Each shrine, carried or wheeled, is sponsored
by a local neighborhood or merchants association.
Or swim club, or school, or whatever.

As they roll or bounce along their routes, back and
forth, they often stop and pay their regards to
the businesses that sponsored them, or perhaps,
those they feel like addressing. The big carts
actually swing around on a central post to help
this.

Did I mention that they all roll on stout wood
wheels and axles? Most are steered with a small
wheel like a skid hand-truck, but some rely
solely on guys with big poles to lever them
around.

A continuous cheer that sound a bit like
A SAI! SAI! SUSKA! is kept up for hours.
Often a small cart holding iced canned tea
follows for frequent breaks.

The shrines, both big and small, make it up and
down some really steep hills. I got to help carry
one of the portable shrines (As in Yokohama,
bystanders can get drafted!) and they are HEAVY!
And you better move in sync with everyone else!
Being a bit too tall is no help either.

I finally gave up around 7pm. I had
run out of digital camera batteries,
35mm film, and spare cash.

But I bought some size 29(cm)
(size 12.5 Canadian) high black
Tabi sock-shoes Way Kewl!

When I got home, I found the whole festival
was being live-cast on the local comunity
TV channel- It went on until 10pm.

Wow!

Doing my part to preserve Japanese culture

My friend here is getting a bit concerned about the
quantity of used, bargain grade kimonos, yukatas,
and obi’s I have bought and jammed into suitcases.

She vows that I am NOT getting any help lugging
this stuff back to the airport. I am now at my luggage
weight limit. I have bought all the bargains in Japan!

I really really find it difficult to resist.

My friend worries that I have filled my
luggage with stuff that is close to trash.

First, a bit of background on trash I Japan:

I have a natural magpie instinct. I have
had to severely control it while I am here.
Such behaviour is one of the worst
social crimes in Japan. Last night on tv I saw
a report on a “Gomi-Ga”: an old guy who has
a storefront house and has turned packrat
and filled it with so much trash that the piles
push out onto the sidewalk. Ok, no big
deal - things like that happen in Canada too.

Letting your trash pile up is 1000 times more
offensive over here. Understand that you
have to pay to throw ANYTHING out in Japan,
and that illegal dumping carries a really really
stiff fine. Japan does recycling, and energy
saving, and conservation in an intense and
so well organised manner as to make a Canuck
environmentalist despair.

Trash picking is frowned upon almost as much as
not sorting your trash properly for recycling,
and/or not using the right, prepaid bag to dispose
of your daily scraps.

(My friend translated the notes left by her apartment
supervisor taped to non-official trash bags in the trash
room at her apartment - it is under 24hr video surveillance,
so that mystery leavings ar equickly identified
- I’ll post some pix with xlations soon!)

So saving/ storing/ selling used stuff is generally
frowned upon over here. And, the “gomi” term
doesn’t just mean trash -
It’s meaning is closer to “trash with shit on it”.

So used stuff is problemmatic in Japan.

Back to used clothing:

My problem is that the traditional clothing
of Japan is very beautiful. Damn hard to
resist.

It is also a pain in the wallet to maintain properly.
It also takes up a lot of space. With an ageing
population, a lot of it just ends up in the rag
bin or the incinerator. Unlike western t-shirts,
used kimonos seldom end up baled and exported
to devastate traditional clothing markets in 3rd
world countries.

When they are gone, they will be gone for good.

A used Kimono shop used to be almost
a contradiction in terms, or a tourist trap.
Recently, things are changing as the older
generation dies off.

At a station Mall , four stations away, there is a
shop that is part of a chain of used Kimono
re-sellers. High end. All good looking as new.
No hint of abjection or mess here!

And they know their stuff!

They specialise in the high end of the trade:
Perfect, used once and thoroughly cleaned
articles; Obi’s starting at $50 and up.
$1,000+ used full outfits!

My friend thought
it would be a good idea to show
me some of the good stuff. Besides, I had
just sucessfully survived a visit the local
public bath (that’s another post) without major
trauma or upset and deserved to have a
little treat. I don’t think she counted on them
having a bargain table!

The nice sales lady explained that these had
moisture stains and/or dust stains and were
for craft purposes. The prices ran from 100
to 500 yen. Perfectly folded, clean-looking
(until you look closely) No tears, no rips:

JACKPOT!

Sorry. . . they don’t have an English store
name. The closest thing to a translation

would be "kimono chest"

UPDATE:

Here's the website:

http://www.tansuya.jp/

Cheers

Japan time

One thing that it seldom mentioned in
gaijin blogs is how the odd (to westerners)
time zone setup and local custom act to
structure the day.

For one thing, ALL of Japan is in one
time zone. That means the eastern side of
Japan has sunrise around 5am-5:30am,
and sunset around 5pm. Earlier sunsets
and later sunrises as fall creeps by.
Eastern Japan means
Tokyo etc.
Japan does not do DST.

So all those salarymen come home in the
dark. And night falls FAST in these parts.
There is a reason all the bikes have a cute
bowing-out of the right front carrier support.
It’s to make room for the front bike light that
rubs on the tire, and you better have
one unless you want to become a statistic,
or hit a pedestrian. Or other rider, or car.
Strangely enough rear lights are not common.

Then there is the practice of opening most
stores at 10am or even 11am!

The idea is that the average housewife is going
to get the kids and hubby ready for school &
work, then have a relax and only THEN,
go shopping. Stores close anytime from 6 to 9pm.

So if you are a tourist, feel free to sleep in.

Everything is closed anyway.

However if you wait until 8pm to pick up some
marked down premade salaryman-chow at the
local supermarket, it may be all gone.
<growl goes mr tummy>

Harajuku on Sunday

We‘re all here to look at the beautiful people.

The Harajuku is the forward fashion district in Tokyo.
That means a rather scrubbed, somewhat anime-
inspired goth look for the youth in tight alley shops.

Sports-wear seems to come in a close second as a
theme. Plenty of japlish tshirts (I swear they go out of
their way to make the words awkward -

there are plenty of proficient english speakers around. The syntactical
mangling has become tactical.

Cleanest, happiest goths I’ve ever seen.

On the main streets, big names out of any fashion
magazine in tall glass towers.

Off to the side, the Togo shrine with a smallish
bi-monthly clothing and stuff flea market.

No great bargains this time
- no fill a big bag for 1,000 yen (appx $10),
but some nice stuff.

Prices were way up, I suspect because the place
was overrun with gaijin!

Check out the gaijin who bought too much
and are packing it onto their bikes! The wood
thing is a frame over which a coverlet is spread.
Then a charcoal heater in a ceramic pot was placed
under it, and you put your legs under the cover.

Nobody uses these any more. You can find the
charcoal pots at better local antique stores.

I bought too much, the airline home is gonna whack me good

on the weight unless I jettison all the clothes I brought
with me for the trip.

So at the airport, returning, I’ll be the guy wearing
baggy construction pants and 3 kimonos!

And carrying a man-purse! The luggage allowance
allows a purse as well as 2 carry-on bags.

Yikes!

Yes, we have no bananas

Suddenly, you can’t buy any bananas at the grocery stores.

There are 5 in walking distance from me, but some TV personality
came out with a banana diet (Eat all you want when you are hungry)
and now there is a shortage everywhere.

You wouldn’t think that Japan has a lot of obese people, what with
all their yummy healthy food, but apparently they think they do.
They call it Metabolic Syndrome, and a search of Google will turn
up all kinds of stuff on it.

No Bananas with yoghurt and granola for breakfast.

In Search of Bike Parts

I have already mentioned how important bicycles are for
everyday travel in Japan. Note the bike parking at the train
station. I really like the rear carrier and kickstand designs
used on the typical commuting bike, so I decided to find a few.

Chu-Ko would be a close approximation of the word for "used".
Used is still an odd concept in Japan. Most shops do not want
to sell used stuff.

Today I biked all over, hunting bike shops with the aid of google
maps and babblefish xlator. The one shop I had found earlier
proved to be the jackpot: I can now set up my home bike with the
way-kewl rear rack and kick-stand.

The rest of the shops wouldn’nt do Chu-Ko.
Much biking around all over, getting lost, finding neat things
to see.

There is a forlorn street mall a few Km from where I
stay. Because it is not near a station it is hard for the merchants,
I think. It has a ghibli-esque quality to it. If it had free
noodles to eat at a stand, I would have freaked out.
(c.f. Spirited Away)

Guess I’ll have to buy a new stand for the other bike.

There goes the weight limit on my return luggage.
The customs people are going to scratch their heads.

UPDATE: I made it back to the little Mall on Saturday.
This time more of the stores were open, and the whole
scene had more life to it. The little bike shop - which turned
out to be bigger than I first thought, had a used kickstand
that the owner insisted on gifting me with. WOW!

The stand in the foreground cooks waffles filled with
sweat bean paste or chocolate - 100Y each! YUMMY!

This Sunday: A masive used clothing sale at a big temple in Tokyo.

Rain

It’s rainy lately.

If I wasn’t so tired, I’d write about ll the neat ways
Jp society deals with the rain & humidity.

Perhaps later..

Cheers everyone.