“The origins of both the activity of barbecue cooking and the word itself are somewhat obscure. Most etymologists believe that barbecue derives ultimately from the word barbacoa found in the language of the Taíno people of the Caribbean. The word translates as sacred fire pit and is also spelled barbacoa.^[2] The word describes a grill for cooking meat, consisting of a wooden platform resting on sticks.” (from Wikipedia; [full article link])

My girlfriend’s work mates decided to have a barbecue last Sunday (two days ago, that is), and people were invited to bring their significant others’ with them. My girlfriend doesn’t like being with a lot of people and we rarely do “big group stuff”, so this was a bit of a rare occasion.

I had a lovely time. We went to Biwako, the biggest (freshwater) lake in Japan, where we set up a grill and cooked insane amounts of various meats and vegetables, drank beer (or coke/Japanese tea for those who drove or who don’t drink alcohol) and swam. I actually love swimming, but I rarely do it in Sweden — the water’s way too cold most of the year for my liking.

I was the only non-Japanese there, but that wasn’t a big problem. Everyone was super-nice and really relaxed and cool, so I felt right at home. We all kept eating as the group of people who were handling the grilling kept switching in and out at their leisure, and once I started to feel full, they were still pouring a bunch of meat and stuff onto the grills. I want to take a moment to relate to another story that happened right before the summer vacation, around early August if I recall…

School had arranged a barbecue. Actually, it was by the very same lake (Biwako), but on a different spot (lake’s big, and there seem to be camps riddled around the whole thing of various kind). Everyone paid 1500 yen each which in all honesty is dirt-cheap. We ended up being 40 of us going. There were two grills. And one guy had the bright idea that he was gonna bring his own meat and grill it there. And not share. Which resulted in everyone. Everyone. Standing around the grills waiting. Waiting. Waiting. After I got 3 slices of meat I simply gave up on “food” and went elsewhere.

Back to this Sunday, we all paid 3000 yen each. But comparing to the school barbecue, I truly realized what a lousy deal that had been. Never, ever doing anything with the school again, if it involves me paying money. By god, never.

Anyway, early on we were all just sort of drinking beer and chilling while waiting for the grill to heat up. I went to the bathroom at some point and when I came back, my girlfriend suggested I go wash my feet in the lake since I was barefeet. I’d already gotten into my swimsuit that morning and was wearing those and a t-shirt only, so once I put my feet into the water I couldn’t contain myself so I threw my t-shirt in the sand by the beach and dove into the water, and once I got back up, everyone was snickering at me. Wonder why.

Of course, since I’d set the precedent, everyone realized there was no turning back, so people went and got changed into swimsuits and the like (some people didn’t even bring any, but they were eventually thrown in by the rest of us anyway … no prisoners!) and we all went swimming. Since it’s September, it started getting chilly quickly, but being IN the water wasn’t cold in my opinion. Some whined more than others though (*eyes girlfriend*).

Unfortunately it’s September and it’s not exactly getting warmer as the days pass from here on. I’m definitely going to insist on us going back again next summer. Repeatedly. Once it gets humid and hot, I’m going to start whining like a fat little snot-pup needing his sugar-high.

I went to fireworks yesterday with my girlfriend and two of her friends (A and her boyfriend, H). We had a perfect view from where we were sitting, thanks to A and H who grabbed a spot for the four of us when they arrived. They were early, we were late.

A and H were both wearing yukatas while me and my girlfriend (Ayapuu) wore regular clothes. I would’ve liked to have worn my yukata again too, but neither me nor my girlfriend thought about it.

When we got there, there was this little wagon-trail of food stands, lit up and noisy, down below where we were sitting, so me and Ayapuu went down and bought Takoyaki, fried chicken (in a mug…?), and yakisoba. Tasted awesome but we could only carry that much so we didn’t really get full.

The fireworks were pretty. Sort of like art. Not at all like the fireworks in Sweden, in new years, with the whole sky exploding in colors. The Swedish new years fireworks have their charm too, but this was more “thought out” and less erratic/spastic. I think I spotted that mushroom in Super Mario Bros (the original NES game) that is the very first enemy you see, but I’m not sure.

It continued for a little over an hour. A 30-ish year old little woman was sitting behind us commenting.

On every.

Single.

Mother fucking.

Firework. Like, every time something appeared on the sky there was a comment right from behind. I shrugged it off, thinking she was with a kid, but afterwards when I turned around, she was alone with her (I presume) boyfriend. No kid.

Anyway, there was a silly amount of people there, though I’m sort of getting used to the concept by now. The way home I thought we were gonna be standing in line to get on the train for an hour+, but we got on the first one that arrived, some 10 minutes after we got there. With the amount of people there, it must have taken like 3-4 trains before everyone managed to get back home.

When we got back to my girlfriends’ city, we went to a convenience store and bought food (told you the Takoyaki/fried chicken (in a mug…?)/yakisoba combo wasn’t enough) which we ate back at her family’s place.

I’ll definitely go again next year, praying that the retarded little woman won’t be anywhere in my vicinity that time. I was told that there were fireworks today as well, but I’m not THAT intrigued by them, so I’m just gonna wait until next year.

Or try to get my ass to Sweden this new years.

On the 17th of July, I skipped school to go see the parade-thing for the Gion festival. There was a fuckload of people, but not as bad as it usually is, or so they tell me.

By the way, I realized that maybe it makes more sense to write text about a picture above the picture, rather than below it. I’m still sort of torn on this one, but I’m gonna give it a shot. Here’s The New Me!

As you can see below, the car lanes were empty of cars. And people. Except those who were a part of the festival. We regular folks were standing on the opposing sides watching. From what I saw on TV, I thought everyone was just running around in a big mass of people helping out carrying the things, but that might have been some other festival. Anyways…

Each one of these things came with a troupe of people doing things. In fact, the big carriages (hokos) had loads of people. What you see below is the very first hoko, Naginataboko (長刀鉾). The guy holding the big banner has the name of the float/carriage written on the banner. Each hoko had a “flag-carrier” like this.

As you see below, these things required a lot of people to move! (This is the same hoko as above.) The people are wearing rather traditional clothing as you can see, and there was a feeling that each float and its people were a group on its own, slightly apart from the others. Every group seemed to have its own style, both on the outside, clothing and decorations, and on the inside, in how they behaved and acted.

As you can see below, a lot of people are sitting in, and on, the hoko as it is being pulled. Unfortunately I didn’t catch it (too far away), but if you look at the center of the “balcony”, there’s a little boy sitting there in very elaborate garbs.

At the beginning of the festival, there was this white rope hanging across the road, crossing the path for the hoko. The float was pulled up close to the rope, after which the little boy pulled out a katana and cut the rope, allowing the hoko passage. Pretty cool, but I couldn’t really see anything from where I was standing.

Standing at the front, you can see two guys dressed in white, leaning outwards holding a rope. These guys were directing the hokos, sort of. They had this really cool series of movements involving fans to tell the pullers to start pulling and stuff.

Naginataboko, from the behind. The detail put into these things is unbelievable.

There were a lot of kids involved in the festival. I was worried they’d succumb to the heat, but they seemed fine.

Number 2 out of 32 — Mousouyama (孟宗山)! (No, I didn’t take pictures of every one of them! In fact, I didn’t even see all of them.)

Mousouyama, the actual float, not just the flag this time.

As you can see, the “feeling” of this one is completely different from the other ones. Those carpets or whatever they are, sure look sweet.

Number 5, Kankoboko (函谷鉾). Magnificent piece.

A lot of music — or, sounds — were involved in the Gion festival. In fact, stores all over Kyoto (not only the city but the suburbs as well) played Gion festival “drum-recordings” in the speakers inside the food stores. To remind people of the festival, perhaps. Or maybe just to liven up the day. The float-inhabitants, or however you wanna call them, were into music too. In the picture below, a bunch of people are playing flutes. I adore their tails. You just wanna jump out and grab one and pull.

Two words — “cool dragon”. I would really like to have that tapestry for my birthday.

Okay, that’s quite tall.

My mom (and some of the Skotos people, I bet) would kill baby seals to get her hands on some of these clothes. She’s a drama teacher. What else can I say?

Same one, from the behind.

If you read the previous post (Gion part 1) I mentioned that some of the big floats weren’t “big” per se, just different from all the others. There’s one particular one with dancers. The float itself is small, but the dancing makes it a hoko anyway. Below is the “main” dancer, from what I can tell. I love his outfit. His dance was pretty cool too.

These guys were a part of the dancing hoko as well.

We actually made a movie of the dance, but I won’t upload that here.

Anyway, this is a selection of the pictures I took. If I’d had a real camera I’d have gotten more and better. I’ll get one before the next big festival I attend.

The end!

I occasionally read about how other people do stuff, such as experience traditional Japanese tea ceremonies or wander the Russian steppes or eat Big Momma’s sweet potato pie or, you know, stuff that you think people might be interested in hearing about. Sometimes when I hear these kinds of stories or see the pictures they took, I think to myself “are they just happy they did something, or did they actually find it interesting?” “Did the excitement and anticipation they held before they went ‘lift them’ through it, or did the contents affect them in a meaningful way?” These are perhaps odd questions to think about, but I can’t help wondering sometimes.

You know, you go somewhere, visit some place, you think it’s quite the deal, and then you tell people, they get all “oh man I wish I’d been there”-blue, and so on. But did you really, honestly enjoy the show, or did you just think it was cool to have done it? Sometimes I end up realizing, long after the fact, that I didn’t really get much out of some event or thing that I experienced and was all excited about at the time. The Gion festival was not, however, one of those times.

To some people that I know, it wasn’t all that interesting. To me, it told an indefinite, unending tale about a past so well preserved that we of the West could only marvel at a single shred of scrap from one of these things, were it dug out from its many centuries of hiding beneath the earth. A thousand years of history preserved and protected and even, today, the tradition, although changed, no doubt, is still upheld and honored.

It was as frightening to me to see the dedication and devotion and homage these people displayed as it was inspiring. As 30-40 people were pulling, by hand, one of these huge vehicles past you on the street, there was no being unaffected. The grinding and squeaking of the enormous wheels whipped your consciousness to life. This was no game. Not solely a game, anyway. But enough of that (or rather, more of that later)….

The Gion festival is named after a district of Kyoto, and is said to have originated as part of a purification ritual over a thousand years ago. I’d tell you all about how that came to be, but I think Wikipedia does a better job, especially since I know nearly nothing.

Yes, that is me. And yes, my hair looks a little odd right now. I’m working on it. More importantly, I’m wearing a yukata.

It was definitely an interesting week, though. During the evenings of 15th-17th of July, the streets where the festival was to take place (mainly Shijou-Kawaramachi and the surrounding streets) were turned into pedestrian streets (no cars). According to my girlfriend there weren’t a lot of people this year, but to me, it was like a living wall of flesh. Scary stuff. I hope it stays ‘not a lot of people’ the next year too, or earth might tilt over due to the excessive weight of human matter in one concentrated place.

This is the morning of July 17th, right before 9 am. “Not a lot of people.” (It actually wasn’t that bad… in front of us. Whenever I turned around I saw naught but humanity.)

The culmination of the festival was 9 am on 17th of July, where a number of differently shaped and sized carriages (32 of them, to be exact) were carried/dragged through the streets by people dressed in traditional attire. These carriages were classified as either yamas (”mountains”) or hokos (”spears”), where, generally speaking, the yamas are smaller than the hokos (sounds a little tilted, I know), or in some cases, the hokos were simply unique enough to be considered hokos, rather than yamas. Some of those carriages were huge, though. You can’t help feeling awed by the pure energy behind the moving of those monstrosities, which was of course done exactly as it was done a thousand years ago.

Fune Hoko, one of my faves (look at that birdie, so damn cool!), on the eve of July 15th; the yamas and hokos were spread out throughout the city the days prior to the actual pulling them around, and a part of the festival was to go around and look at them, even enter them. The above hoko is shaped like a ship, and is called Fune Hoko (船鉾), which simply means “Ship Hoko”.

Gion is one of the most famous festivals in Japan, and there’s a lot of information about it, in English. Here’re a few links in case you want to read more thoroughly about what I’m talking about below:

• Wikipedia article on Gion (the district).
• Wikipedia article on Gion Matsuri (the festival).
• Information about the yamas and hokos — worth reading if you want to know the background behind these things.
• A sorta map over where they were located (prior to the “big move” on July 17th) — a few years old, but you get the picture.

Now for some pictures, more or less in chronologic order.

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On June 1st, me, my girlfriend and her parents went to Tenryuuji, which is considered a world heritage ([wikipedia article]). It’s basically a pond, surrounded by a series of little gardens of various kind. There’s also a building you can go into which has a pretty nifty dragon painted in the ceiling, but you’re not allowed to take pictures in there, so I can’t show you. I can show you pretty gardens, though.

The main area is the place with the gardens. The gardens actually surround this big mansion-like place, where monks do rites and stuff on occasion. Regular folks can’t actually go into the mansion on these days. Luckily this day wasn’t one of those days so we could go inside as well. Anyway, let’s start with the actual getting there.

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