You might be asking, "What does Golden Week actually celebrate?" Or, "What is the history of Golden Week?" Well, the truth is that no one knows! And by that I mean only the Japanese know, and none of them are telling me. Not in English, anyway.
On Wednesday afternoon, I was sculpting a fierce turtle out of aluminum foil when I heard the rumbling of distant drums. Odd, I thought. Who's drumming? And it sounds like the drums are getting closer. Indeed they were. So I set aside my turtle, put on my sandals, and explored outside, where the answer was found not a block from my apartment. It turns out that the drums were placed inside this massive, ornate, festooned wooden shrine cart-thingy, and people were inside beating the drums and gongs and whatnot. Outside the cart were young girls swinging lanterns or fans, as well as young men strapped to the roof of the shrinne, waving sticks with colorful streamers attached. The entire shrine was being pulled by a team of drunken old men.
How did I know that they were drunk, you might ask? Well, occasionally they would take breaks and pass around cases of Asahi beer in large bottles. Additionally, the pulling people would often disappear into back alleys and discreetly vomit (I'm learning that a lot of Japanese cultural activities involve excessive consumption of alcohol and discreet vomiting) and then get back to pulling the cart. Anyway, if I got completely trashed, and spent a hot, sunny day hauling around a massive shrine/cart thingy loaded with people and drums, I'd probably vomit too.
It turns out that this cart was one of many, and they were parading all day through Mikage, the suburb of Kobe where I live. I must've seen eight or nine carts, each with their own specially-uniformed and color-coordinated crew.
Anyway, with my trusty digital camera I captured some video of the cart and posted it to YouTube.com, which, coincidentally, represents the single-greatest entertainment innovation since the advent of network television. Here's the link.
In other news, I traveled to Minoh, which is far north in the Osaka boonies. There they had this beautiful waterfall that you could get to by traversing several kilometers of beautifully lush and forested terrain. It was awesome, and I took a bunch of pictures. If you didn't get the e-mail link for the pictures, let me know and I'll send you a link.
After Minoh I went into downtown Osaka to relax at a gaijin bar called "The Pig and Whistle." There I met a really strange American guy named Bivin who was starting his own eikawa (conversation) school in Osaka which would teach Japanese students English conversational skills as well as new-agey goal-realization "philosophy". He calls his enterprise (and I'm copying directly from his business card) "Bivins EikawaPlus + Philosophy." You might notice the superfluous "plus" sign. I'm thinking that indicates a BIG addition of philosophy.
Anyway, after talking with Bivins for about 30 seconds, I realized that he doesn't know anything about philosophy. Seriously, he knows absolutely nothing. I'm no expert, but after years spent as Errol's roommate, I feel I am at a doctorate level compared to this guy. He opened his spiel with, "I think we can both agree that there are no absolutes, right?" I immediately replied with the playground retort, "I don't know if I agree, Bivin. Doesn't the statement 'there are no absolutes' indicate the existence of an absolute?" Bivin's mind was totally blown, and so was mine because I couldn't believe that he'd never been asked that before. Anyway, after several minutes of shocked sputtering, he gave me his business card (complete with his website, if you're curious), told me BivinsPlus could use a guy like me, and turned his attention to hitting on drunken Japanese women.
And that's about all that's new right now. My ankles and feet have been mysteriously swollen for a couple of days ... it's like I've been on a plane for an extended period of time, but if that were the case I would still have the sour taste of bitterness and fury in my mouth. Perhaps I was abducted by aliens. Maybe blood is pooling in my feet from sitting around too much during Golden Week. I don't know, but just in case I should get up and walk around for a while.
If something is seriously wrong with the circulation in my feet, and if my feet end up needing to be amputated, then hopefully they can be transformed into computer parts, like in this awesome but creepy CG design for a mouse, by Chris Lomaka. Enjoy!
2 comments:
I certainly am enjoying your blog and learning about Japanese culture.
Hope your feet are better.
How appropriate that the sync between the video and sound in the video is slightly off! It's like a Kung Fu movie! And you're in Japan! Now you're making Kung Fu movies in Japan. THAT's immersing yourself in the culture!
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