Festival in the area...

Kim here.....
Today (October 8) we went out with Mr. Takaoka-san, Nikki (New Zealand), and another Japanese man but I forgot his name. We met up with them at our station and then took the JR to a city that was 2 stops by us, Hoden. There we got into a taxi and then it dropped us off by the festival. When we were walking around, we noticed a small area where people were getting ready for the night. We stopped there and looked at the huge float object that many people would have to carry. It was decorated very nice, sparkly and shiny. There were also lights on the top but we couldn’t see them until the night rolled around.

Also many people were staring at our small group and offered us lunch and drinks. I wasn’t sure what all the food was so I mainly ate the fried chicken (karaage), grapes, and rice. There were also different forms of tofu but I don’t like it anyways. I am not kidding….when they offered us the food, they also offered us drinks. Yes, I mean drinks/alcohol. They placed our 5 beers (Kirin), green tea and something else. I was like man we get service around here now don’t we? It was funny because this was the first time Marc and I got free food. I am not sure about the others though.

I think maybe about 20-30 people would have to work together to carry this thing to the front of the stadium/field. It wasn’t very far. It was like a float. I felt like I was apart of the making. (I helped make out float my senior year…..I know it was 1 year but it was a lot of fun) Ok, back to what I was saying….The other Japanese man that was with us said it might weigh about a ton!! That’s very heavy. The square on the top was made professionally, like a house (architecture) but the bottom where you have to carry it, is made out of like 2X4’s but maybe thicker (3-4 in?). The men would have to carry this on their shoulders (one side depending on which side your carrying it). There are 2 more 2X4’s in the center inside of the outer 2X4’s. In the middle of the square house like thingy are 2-4 kids playing on the drums. This also reminded me of playing drums at a Korean camp.

The men and the kids have a specific costume. The men have like a shirt, red vest (depends on which color you are), something like a loin clothe to just cover the front and back (men’s thong). Trust me it was an interesting sight. Every time you would look around some man’s behind was right there or a little boys.

It was nice to see how each team would have to carry these huge wooden floats without dropping it on someone or tipping the huge ton over. At one time, a team was walking too fast and almost tipping it over. Everyone in the crowd you can hear them go “whoa!”. I guess every year someone gets injured….either having broken bones or very sore muscles the next day.

It was a nice sunny 77 degrees day until night fell and it was down in the 60’s. From the temperature change it was very chilly. I felt like I was at a football game when some people don’t really know what to wear because it was warm during the day and cold at night. I had a tank top, t-shirt, and a pink fleece vest on. I was still cold. Marc said “we are freezing our buns off and the men are doing it literally”. Because they just have 2 layers on the upper body and really nothing on the bottom half. We all laughed.

We left back to the station Hoden and at Kakogawa we parted our ways. We thanked them for a wonderful time.