The one day of the year Gotsu gets crowded

Japanese people like festivals. And I mean really like. The week just passed was called Obon. It’s a yearly, nation-wide custom of honouring one's ancestors, and a large part of this honouring takes the form of festivals. Almost every town has at least one, and the larger cities might have dozens. These involve street entertainment, food stalls, parades, lanterns floating downriver to represent the souls of the deceased, and fireworks. So many fireworks. 

I’m a bit fireworked out, to be honest.

On 364 days of the year, Gotsu is a quiet place. Its population sits at roughly 30,000, but in terms of area its reach is relatively far. So even though Route 9 and the town centre it cuts through aren't entirely devoid of activity, the country roads that take you between mountains and over rice plantations remain as peaceful as the day God spoke nature into being.

But on the 16^th of August each year, someone lifts a log, and out from beneath it emerge thousands upon thousands of ants, which congregate in the open. Hearing the commotion, other ant colonies from other logs make their way over, too. Together, these ants hold a festival.

The log is Gotsu, and on Thursday last week I was an ant; the tallest ant, granted, but an ant nonetheless.

Fireworks. Wow!

From about 5:30 in the afternoon, the population in Gotsu’s main square rose from a hundred to 10,000. Stalls selling takoyaki, kebabs, fried chicken, fries, yakisoba, shaved ice, drinks, accessories and more were erected in all the conceivably vacant spots, one stall deploying right up against the next. Locals set up, cooked, and then yelled: “Try this takoyaki, it’s delicious!” My students were among them, some making hot dogs that you could buy for 300 yen a piece, others – a family – selling five flavors of shaved ice. The air became so riddled with the smells of fresh food that if you were entering Gotsu for the first time, you could turn off the GPS and rely entirely on your nose.

But before all this, at the start of the festival, the parading parties all gathered in the town centre to be formally introduced. I lost count of how many groups there were, but they included: representatives from the city hall (pretty much obligated to join) and board of education (including me and some other ALTs), a high school rugby team (whose existence still surprises me), and a rather humble cluster from Sakura co., the pancake café (whose owner was trying to usher some of us to leave our group and join his in an attempt to boost numbers).

It didn’t really matter whose team we were on; we all did the same dance in the end, to the same repetitive song. I say repetitive because we paraded for over half an hour, and Gotsu’s song is a full 45 seconds. Needless to say, by the end of it, we were all ready for the fireworks, which followed.

Everyone – and I mean everyone – sat on the river bank or leaned on the bridge’s guardrails and waited, ate, talked, or watched the countless lanterns float down the river towards the sea – these lanterns being the ancestors’ souls. At 8 o’clock the night had descended, and at 8:10 the fireworks began: a 30-minute display timed to the rhythm of four different musical numbers – plus a few breaks in between to ensure that 30-minute mark was actually reached. This is Gotsu, after all.

Breaks nothwithstanding, watching these fireworks was enjoyable in a satisfying kind of way – like winning Solitaire, only longer and with a good deal more pop.

And after, just as the wind began to pick up, and people I don’t know on either side of me (although some of them I do know, or at least I know their kids) began complaining that it’s cold (which it really wasn't, but the weather can never catch a break with these people, can it?), we all packed up and left.

Leaving is its own ordeal, in the same way getting off a large plane can be an ordeal. You have to wait, and then you have to wait some more. Then finally, just as you’re questioning the tensile strength of your bladder walls, the long line you've been standing in begins to inch its way towards personal space.

One's eyes blink in disbelief at the sight of this station still serving a purpose.

But even after we'd left the river bank, personal space was still a way away. Gotsu Station usually has two people in it, including the ticket office staff. But on this 16^th of August day, you wouldn’t have been able to count the number of people lining up there. That poor station; it was about as ready to burst as my bladder. And though I didn’t take the train, getting my car out from the parking lot onto the road was entirely dependent on the courtesy of fellow drivers. 

But ants in a colony work together, so in the end it wasn’t too bad. One by one – and it was a whole lot slower going home and than going out – we crawled back beneath our logs as if nothing had ever happened, and Gotsu returned to its tranquil and unassuming self once more.

But Obon isn’t the only occasion for festivals. There are plenty more, including the one I attended on Sunday. And there's a lot to be said about that one – next time.

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In a couple of years

I’ve been in Japan for 2 years (and something something days); or, as the Japanese would say, “It has become my third year.” This sounds strange in English, but perfectly fine in Japanese. Such is the headache of a direct translation. And as I learn more of the language, I’m having increasing trouble reconciling it with English.

So ends the yearly update on my life in Japan.

Unrelated, I went to Tokyo last week. It was fantastic. It’s about the size of your imagination multiplied by ten. My only regret was not going there for a longer time, or more often in the past.

What were the highlights? If you ran into me on the street and I had about fifteen seconds to answer, I’d list all the obvious things: Tokyo Tower, Meiji Jingu Shrine, shopping, food, the random Pikachu festival that took me unawares, the fact that a Cookie Time café exists in Tokyo but not in New Zealand, and so on. The trains were also fascinating: the jingles that tell you when the next one’s arriving, the arrows that inform you exactly which side of the stairwell you should walk on when going up or down, and the phenomenon of a hundred and ten people crammed into a car yet remaining perfectly silent, staring into their phones.

The Pikachu that took me unawares. Unsurprisingly, Pikachu was far more popular than Eevee, the other star of the festival.

I might list the lowlights, like the heat, or losing my ICOCA card with 3000-ish yen on it – that’s a lot of train rides! But shou ga nai (it can’t be helped). I bought a new card and deigned not to deposit quite so much yen into it. This was smarter.

But a list like this is superficial. It’s like ingredients in a recipe: predictable and almost meaningless.

The actual highlight was when I stumbled upon a Manuka honey store in the Red Brick Warehouse. Manuka honey is produced from bees that pollinate the New Zealand Manuka bush. It's known for its medicinal properties as much as its steep price. In the store, a clerk saw me scrutinising the photos of New Zealand’s countryside (feat. photobombing sheep). My friend told the clerk that I’m from New Zealand. His eyes beamed, he let out a surprised “Hehhh? Sou desu ka?” (What? Really?), whipped out his phone and proceeded to show me pictures from his work trip to New Zealand last year. He told me he loves the place, was surprised by its perfectly straight roads amidst farmlands, and that he enjoyed the six-hour drive from Christchurch to Nelson, where the company has its home base. He said he’s a Star Alliance gold member, loves Air New Zealand and said he’d visit again if only he were able to take annual leave. He told me that if I ever want to live in Tokyo, I’m welcome to work at his store. I said, “great!”

One of the views from Tokyo Tower.

He’s the second person I met that day who’d visited NZ and loved it. The first was a junior high school teacher who quit due to the lack of time off and is now a counsellor for students wanting to study abroad. She said she fell in love with NZ when, while teaching, she went there for a few weeks to work in a small school. Now, even though she’s used to life in Tokyo, she much prefers the town of three thousand residents in which she stayed, the same region where I was born. She’s going there again next month.

It was great to visit this red brick warehouse. The shops there have such bizarre and fascinating things, like pieces of fake bread to stick over your light switch, and plastic animals with which to accessorise your iPhone charger. Not to mention, the ricotta hot cakes and wagyu beef burger were among the best pancakes and burger I’ve ever had. But nothing can replace the people I happened to meet and the conversations we happened to have. These alone made the whole experience far more memorable and, in hindsight, worthwhile.

The bread is landscape, thus so is this photo.

A few other jots regarding Tokyo:

      -        The frequency of people shorter than me increased a thousand-fold

      -        The frequency of foreigners increased a thousand-fold

      -        I was anonymous

This third factor was one of the main motivators to do a bit of sightseeing in the first place, to leave Gotsu for a bit. See, in the past year, my anonymity in this small town has dwindled to approximately zero. And it’s surprisingly unsettling. Other than at school or private events, I feel a lot of pressure whenever I enter the public space. The daily reality of “people staring” seems to be the main cause of this, but there’s also parents of students who say nothing when I greet them, or certain teachers who at times ignore me entirely. It makes me wonder what they’re thinking – if they’re just tired and don’t have the time, or if it’s something else. And while I manage to shrug off just enough self-consciousness to do everything I need to do, it remains with me a lot of the time, primarily if I’m by myself. I already know why this is: a group provides a source of belonging, which is something all of us, whether we know it or not, seek out. This belonging that’s felt in a group immunises me to the ‘judgements’, but only lasts as long as we’re together. Then, when I’m alone again, I feel ‘singled out’, in a way, by dint of all the staring.

I’m laughing to myself as I type this, because writing it all down makes it seem a bit silly and over-dramatic. Perhaps this process of writing could become a more reliable means of immunisation.

I’m emboldened when I think of others I’ve talked to who share the same feelings, including Japanese teachers I highly respect. I thought they were invincible, yet their own self-confidence is similarly sapped when they feel (regardless if those feelings reflect reality) the cold-eye judgements of those around them. In the least, I’m far from the only one, which makes it all a little bit more OK.

There are a lot of factors involved in these experiences. One of these is that Japanese people tend to keep a straight face a lot more often than western people. Contrarily, westerners both frown and smile on a far more frequent basis. When two familiar faces meet eyes, the thing to do is smile, but in Japan, the thing to do is nothing at all. The straight face is immoveable. Not always, but often.

This expressionlessness is entirely normal here, mind you, meaning that it’s no proper reason for me to infer that the person to whom that face belongs is thinking something negative. Yet, for whatever reason, my emotions and my intellect are at odds.

So as with a year ago, when all of this was a little less intense (because I was less -nonymous), I’m aware that this is entirely my problem and not the rest of Gotsu’s. But, as I’ve learned, it’s an issue that many people in the same situation face.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice to see famliar faces. People whom I’ve met properly and whose names I know are always a delight to meet whether it’s planned or by chance. They’re friendly and talkative, and just this week one of them invited me to a barbecue that they were having the same evening.

There’s also Seiji the chiropractor, who gave me watermelon when I last visited, and, a while before that, boar meat. Seiji likes to hunt, you see. And his new assistant used to be an English teacher, so is able to convey those medical terms I don’t understand. They make a fantastic team, though I do feel a bit bad for the customers to whom he doesn’t give random gifts.

There’s also Takatsuno Elementary School, the best school I’ve ever known. Some of the teachers have decided that Wednesdays and Thursdays – the days I go to that school – are ‘English day’, and try their best to communicate with each other in English whether I’m present or not. They never get very far, but it’s not about how far they get.

The kids are also beyond amazing. I always tell people that before coming to Japan I never really liked children. Now? Well, let’s just say that I’ve never undergone so great a character shift. I gave the fifth graders summer holiday homework, and they all said “Thank you!” with bright eyes and grins on their faces, and without a single teacher prompting them. I was dumbfounded, and elated.

Coming to this school never fails to lift my spirits. The teachers with their warm smiles, who laugh at each other’s futile attempts at English and my often okashii (strange) display of Japanese, invoke a warm atmosphere that makes you feel right at home. They and the students remind me that there’s a lot to be grateful for.

And at the end of the day, with all the flat faces, the strange looks and random gifts, perhaps that’s the greatest immunisation of all. Gratitude.

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