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Today was our first full Japanese breakfast: miso soup, miso paste heated on a lotus leaf resting on a brazier on the table, vegetables (pickled cabbage, lotus root, mushrooms in a sweet creamy sauce, nori = dried seaweed), a bowl of rice, sweetened eggs, and ocha (green tea). Eaten sitting at one of those low Japanese tables, but fortunately for my bad ankle and aging joints, it was one of those tables with a pit beneath it for one’s legs to rest in. Much more comfortable. All the food was delicious (oishi katadesu), and we were hoping to have the same breakfast again tomorrow, only we were in such a hurry to set off on our day’s events that we forgot to ask our hostess to reserve a table for us. Fortunately, we’ll be here a couple more days before moving off on the next leg of our travels.
The first minshuku bathroom I tried didn’t have a wash-olet, but did have a heated toilet seat, which was a nice surprise given that we’re high enough up in the mountains that it gets quite cold at night, and the unheated bathroom seats could be a bit of a shock to the unprepared.
After breakfast, we set off for Furukawa. (The full name is Hida-Furukawa, to distinguish it from another Furukawa. Hereafter, I’ll just use the short name.) The town is about a 15 minute train ride north of Takayama, so when we couldn’t find accommodations in Furukawa during the festival (we waited too long to book; probably needs to be done at least 4 months in advance if you want your pick of places), it was an easy decision for us to stay in Takayama. We almost got off to a bad start by stepping onto the wrong train. The local trains are also operated by Japan Rail, but unlike the shinkansens or possibly just unlike trains nearer to Tokyo, they don’t have the same bilingual messages and the signage isn’t nearly as good. So when we headed for a train that semed to be on the right side of the tracks and facing the right direction, and thus a logical choice, something told me we should double-check. (We were still mightily jet-lagged, so possibly we just weren’t thinking clearly enough to check the arrivals and departures board carefully.) I ran off to ask one of the staffers who check your ticket, in my halting Japanese, whether this was the right train to get us where we were headed. He wasn’t sure, but a helpful Japanese woman who was passing by conferred with him and both soon agreed that the train in question was the milk run to Nagoya, far to the south. Now much wiser, we jogged across to the right track, with a few minutes to spare before the correct train set off. I was proud enough of my language success that I gave Shoshanna an impromptu lesson in Japanese grammar, much to the amusement of an elderly Japanese gentleman sitting across the car from us with his wife.
Furukawa is towards the northern end of the Hida River valley, surrounded by mountains tall enough that they’re still snowcapped. And it’s cold enough that the cherries not only haven’t finished their blossoms, but haven’t actually begun blossoming. I reckon we missed them by about a day, so hopefully they’ll be blooming while we’re still in Takayama. [A look back: Yup. They’re just beginning to peer out of the flower buds. Another day and they’ll be open for business. Magnolias are also about a day from full bloom.) One nice thing about Furukawa is that because of the steep slopes on all sides, there’s a constant supply of water, and it runs throughout much of the town in channels ranging from slots about a foot across that run past in front of many (most?) houses to a full-fledged river channel 50 to 100 feet across in places. Thus, in much of the town there’s a constant sound of running water. Particularly when resting weary feet on the steps of one of the three large temples, it’s very soothing.
The town is quite modern, but retains enough of an antique feel to make for pleasant strolling to explore nooks and crannies—which we did all day, stopping only for lunch in a noodle shop and dinner on street food on the steps of the local museum in the main town square. Our lunch was soba (buckwheat) noodles, washed down with ocha (green tea) and sobaya (the water used to boil the noodles, thus starchy and thick). Dinner was one of my favorite Japanese snacks, okonomi-yaki, which is basically an eggy pancake fried up with onions, dried fish flakes (I prefer chicken or beef, but it wasn’t offered), and topped off with a tangy barbeque sauce and sweet mayonnaise. It’s tender enough to eat with chopsticks, which we did in festival square while waiting for the main event to get going, and we washed it down with Kirin beer. Drinking beer in a public space is an interesting difference, and we weren’t alone: many people seemed to be drinking around the public spaces, which is not something you’d see in most western countries. (There are usually beer gardens, but you’re not allowed to drink in the streets for fear of drunken rowdiness, of which we saw none.) We were also offered strong shots of sake by a group of float attendants; more about floats in a moment. I like sake a lot, and Shoshanna is willing to try it, but she didn’t finish hers so I got a double dose.
In between meals, we walked most of the day, seeing what there was to be seen. During the day, nine tall (20+ feet?) and elaborate floats are paraded around the town, drawn by sweating crews of men wearing a variety of traditional costumes. The floats reminded me of mobile Hindu temples, stepped like layer cakes and covered with beautiful wood carvings, inlaid brass and gold, ceramics, and traditional watercolor paintings. The floats differed in the details, but were similar in the beauty of their ornamentation. Mostly it’s all well-integrated, in that subtle Japanese way I love, but parts are quite garish. The older floats (most more than a century old, some nearly 300 years old) are tall enough that young men precede them through the streets, lifting the electric lines with bamboo poles so the floats can pass safely beneath. There isn’t a lot of English documentation available about the festival, but what we found suggests it’s all being done in the service of inspiring community spirit and a sense of playful competition.
The top of each float collapses into the next tier down when necessary (we saw this done once), but the top is usually fully raised and populated by children (early in the day) or adults (later) playing flutes and drums. We managed to find and see all of the floats by the end of the day, and everyone crewing them seemed universally cheery, despite the heavy labor of hauling these leviathans around the city. There were also a few of what I called “larval” floats, small enough that they were clearly the toddlers of the float ecosystem. Favorite moment: watching the children disembarking from inside the float.
Towards the end of the day, we spent a couple hours walking along the streets that hosted the “food court”, which extended over several blocks. Both sides were lined with street vendors hawking food, posters of pop stars, plastic toys, and all kinds of other miscellany. My favorite part was watching all the kids (from the tottering toddlers to tweens) trying their hands at various midway-type attractions. For example, many small kids were using kid-sized nets to dip goldfish out of long flat aquariums (taking them home in plastic bags), to catch turtles, or to fish for marbles or rubber balls. This was very happy-making because the kids were having so much fun. I shared a chocolate-dipped banana with Shoshanna along the way, just because.
I wrote the first draft of this blog entry from the steps of the Furukawa festival exhibition hall (a small museum that explains the festival but was closed by the time we got there). We’d chosen that location because it seemed likely seats at the top of the steps would offer a great view of the platform containing the festival’s main drum. We were exhausted from the last dregs of jet lag and a day spent walking, so we settled in early, ate our dinner, and waited for the festival to begin a few hours later. Our seats were nicely positioned to look down on the square from a vantage above the heads of the crowd that soon began gathering. We were reasonably confident in our choice, and it was confirmed when the local senior citizens’ brigade (a few dozen elderly Japanese spectators) arrived and settled in around us to wait. In front of us, a crew of nearly 20 photographers had gathered to draw lots and see who would be first to climb atop a 15-foot platform that would give them an excellent view of the ceremonies. Unlike in a western situation, where you’d expect the photographers to be jockeying for position and probably ignoring any attempt by officials to regulate who would stand where, these gentlemen patiently waited together below the platform as an official called their names and they reached into a bag to see what number they’d drawn. Once the numbers were revealed, everyone lined up politely in numerical order and climbed atop the photography platform to choose their position.
By about 7 PM, it was dark and we were still sitting on the steps waiting for the “naked festival” to begin. That’s not nearly as risqué as it sounds... it's primarily a drum festival: okoshi daiko (though I’ve more often seen drums spelled “taiko”). The "naked" part comes when the young men from each neighborhood of the city strip down to loincloths and roam through the streets, bearing 2-foot-wide drums strapped to poles about 15 feet long, banging the drums, singing, shouting, and generally trying to muster their macho. From the festival square, you can hear them coming from quite a way off. When they eventually arrive at the festival square, they’re lined up all along the pole bearing their drum, and they parade over towards the platform bearing the main drum (about 3 feet in diameter), which has been awaiting them all day. The goal is to outcompete each other in an effort to get their drum chosen to ride on the platform with the main drum. Presumably the winners get bragging rights for the rest of the year if they accomplish this. Again, it’s all done in a spirit of friendly competition, and everyone’s clearly having a blast.
During the two or three hours before the winners are declared, new bands of young men continue arriving with their drum and showing off before the crowds of people. I counted nine in total, so perhaps one for each of the floats from earlier in the day? They plant the poles bearing the drums vertically, like flag poles, then begin swaying the tops back and forth while chanting their team’s particular battle cry. The drum sits about 8 feet off the ground during all of this. Fueled by sake, which they drink and then spray over each other in a fine mist, the nimble and muscular young men sing, chant, and generally ham it up for the crowds. After some time has passed, and they’ve worked their courage to the sticking point, they begin taking turns running up the backs of their fellows, perching on the drum, and waving to exhort the crowd to cheer for them as the pole sways back and forth. Then they vault to the top of the pole, carefully position it around their navel, and then fling themselves out horizontally, spreadeagled, balancing a scary distance off the ground, much to the delight of the crowd. (Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of this part; I didn’t want to be the dumbass tourist who flashed someone in the eyes and caused them to fall from the pole.) When they’re done performing, they descend: some stand on the drum and exhort the crowd again, others descend upside down like pole dancers in a strip club, some vault down off the backs of their buddies. Sometimes two climb the pole at the same time: one vaults to the top, while the other hangs off the pole beneath them. Nobody fell, but there were a few near misses.
By 9 PM, everyone’s there, and the square is packed with tourists (mostly Japanese). Most (and sometimes all of the poles) are crowned by a sequence of spreadeagled young men, each taking their turn. Much noise and chanting and singing and spraying of sake. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay to see how the rest of it turned out; we were both exhausted, and after the sun fell, Shoshanna grew increasingly cold. We left shortly after 9, headed home by train, both fled downstairs for a soak in the hot tubs (scalding but delightful), followed by a hot shower and (at least for me), falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Miscellaneous notes: Despite how much fun this festival was, we were two of the very small handful of westerners in the crowd. It doesn’t seem to be well-advertised other than to Japanese tourists, which is a shame, because it really was fun. The entire festival was aswarm with young children, ranging from flocks of school kids (who I took to calling “ducklings” because of their yellow baseball caps) to tweenagers. Unlike a typical western festival, there was not a single policeman (or first-aider, for that matter) anywhere in sight. There were many officials directing traffic on the street, waving flags to control traffic and pedestrians, but they didn’t seem to be police; they certainly weren’t armed or armored like a western police office. Japan is a very civilized country, and you can apparently rely on the people to behave like civilized folks.
The first minshuku bathroom I tried didn’t have a wash-olet, but did have a heated toilet seat, which was a nice surprise given that we’re high enough up in the mountains that it gets quite cold at night, and the unheated bathroom seats could be a bit of a shock to the unprepared.
After breakfast, we set off for Furukawa. (The full name is Hida-Furukawa, to distinguish it from another Furukawa. Hereafter, I’ll just use the short name.) The town is about a 15 minute train ride north of Takayama, so when we couldn’t find accommodations in Furukawa during the festival (we waited too long to book; probably needs to be done at least 4 months in advance if you want your pick of places), it was an easy decision for us to stay in Takayama. We almost got off to a bad start by stepping onto the wrong train. The local trains are also operated by Japan Rail, but unlike the shinkansens or possibly just unlike trains nearer to Tokyo, they don’t have the same bilingual messages and the signage isn’t nearly as good. So when we headed for a train that semed to be on the right side of the tracks and facing the right direction, and thus a logical choice, something told me we should double-check. (We were still mightily jet-lagged, so possibly we just weren’t thinking clearly enough to check the arrivals and departures board carefully.) I ran off to ask one of the staffers who check your ticket, in my halting Japanese, whether this was the right train to get us where we were headed. He wasn’t sure, but a helpful Japanese woman who was passing by conferred with him and both soon agreed that the train in question was the milk run to Nagoya, far to the south. Now much wiser, we jogged across to the right track, with a few minutes to spare before the correct train set off. I was proud enough of my language success that I gave Shoshanna an impromptu lesson in Japanese grammar, much to the amusement of an elderly Japanese gentleman sitting across the car from us with his wife.
Furukawa is towards the northern end of the Hida River valley, surrounded by mountains tall enough that they’re still snowcapped. And it’s cold enough that the cherries not only haven’t finished their blossoms, but haven’t actually begun blossoming. I reckon we missed them by about a day, so hopefully they’ll be blooming while we’re still in Takayama. [A look back: Yup. They’re just beginning to peer out of the flower buds. Another day and they’ll be open for business. Magnolias are also about a day from full bloom.) One nice thing about Furukawa is that because of the steep slopes on all sides, there’s a constant supply of water, and it runs throughout much of the town in channels ranging from slots about a foot across that run past in front of many (most?) houses to a full-fledged river channel 50 to 100 feet across in places. Thus, in much of the town there’s a constant sound of running water. Particularly when resting weary feet on the steps of one of the three large temples, it’s very soothing.
The town is quite modern, but retains enough of an antique feel to make for pleasant strolling to explore nooks and crannies—which we did all day, stopping only for lunch in a noodle shop and dinner on street food on the steps of the local museum in the main town square. Our lunch was soba (buckwheat) noodles, washed down with ocha (green tea) and sobaya (the water used to boil the noodles, thus starchy and thick). Dinner was one of my favorite Japanese snacks, okonomi-yaki, which is basically an eggy pancake fried up with onions, dried fish flakes (I prefer chicken or beef, but it wasn’t offered), and topped off with a tangy barbeque sauce and sweet mayonnaise. It’s tender enough to eat with chopsticks, which we did in festival square while waiting for the main event to get going, and we washed it down with Kirin beer. Drinking beer in a public space is an interesting difference, and we weren’t alone: many people seemed to be drinking around the public spaces, which is not something you’d see in most western countries. (There are usually beer gardens, but you’re not allowed to drink in the streets for fear of drunken rowdiness, of which we saw none.) We were also offered strong shots of sake by a group of float attendants; more about floats in a moment. I like sake a lot, and Shoshanna is willing to try it, but she didn’t finish hers so I got a double dose.
In between meals, we walked most of the day, seeing what there was to be seen. During the day, nine tall (20+ feet?) and elaborate floats are paraded around the town, drawn by sweating crews of men wearing a variety of traditional costumes. The floats reminded me of mobile Hindu temples, stepped like layer cakes and covered with beautiful wood carvings, inlaid brass and gold, ceramics, and traditional watercolor paintings. The floats differed in the details, but were similar in the beauty of their ornamentation. Mostly it’s all well-integrated, in that subtle Japanese way I love, but parts are quite garish. The older floats (most more than a century old, some nearly 300 years old) are tall enough that young men precede them through the streets, lifting the electric lines with bamboo poles so the floats can pass safely beneath. There isn’t a lot of English documentation available about the festival, but what we found suggests it’s all being done in the service of inspiring community spirit and a sense of playful competition.
The top of each float collapses into the next tier down when necessary (we saw this done once), but the top is usually fully raised and populated by children (early in the day) or adults (later) playing flutes and drums. We managed to find and see all of the floats by the end of the day, and everyone crewing them seemed universally cheery, despite the heavy labor of hauling these leviathans around the city. There were also a few of what I called “larval” floats, small enough that they were clearly the toddlers of the float ecosystem. Favorite moment: watching the children disembarking from inside the float.
Towards the end of the day, we spent a couple hours walking along the streets that hosted the “food court”, which extended over several blocks. Both sides were lined with street vendors hawking food, posters of pop stars, plastic toys, and all kinds of other miscellany. My favorite part was watching all the kids (from the tottering toddlers to tweens) trying their hands at various midway-type attractions. For example, many small kids were using kid-sized nets to dip goldfish out of long flat aquariums (taking them home in plastic bags), to catch turtles, or to fish for marbles or rubber balls. This was very happy-making because the kids were having so much fun. I shared a chocolate-dipped banana with Shoshanna along the way, just because.
I wrote the first draft of this blog entry from the steps of the Furukawa festival exhibition hall (a small museum that explains the festival but was closed by the time we got there). We’d chosen that location because it seemed likely seats at the top of the steps would offer a great view of the platform containing the festival’s main drum. We were exhausted from the last dregs of jet lag and a day spent walking, so we settled in early, ate our dinner, and waited for the festival to begin a few hours later. Our seats were nicely positioned to look down on the square from a vantage above the heads of the crowd that soon began gathering. We were reasonably confident in our choice, and it was confirmed when the local senior citizens’ brigade (a few dozen elderly Japanese spectators) arrived and settled in around us to wait. In front of us, a crew of nearly 20 photographers had gathered to draw lots and see who would be first to climb atop a 15-foot platform that would give them an excellent view of the ceremonies. Unlike in a western situation, where you’d expect the photographers to be jockeying for position and probably ignoring any attempt by officials to regulate who would stand where, these gentlemen patiently waited together below the platform as an official called their names and they reached into a bag to see what number they’d drawn. Once the numbers were revealed, everyone lined up politely in numerical order and climbed atop the photography platform to choose their position.
By about 7 PM, it was dark and we were still sitting on the steps waiting for the “naked festival” to begin. That’s not nearly as risqué as it sounds... it's primarily a drum festival: okoshi daiko (though I’ve more often seen drums spelled “taiko”). The "naked" part comes when the young men from each neighborhood of the city strip down to loincloths and roam through the streets, bearing 2-foot-wide drums strapped to poles about 15 feet long, banging the drums, singing, shouting, and generally trying to muster their macho. From the festival square, you can hear them coming from quite a way off. When they eventually arrive at the festival square, they’re lined up all along the pole bearing their drum, and they parade over towards the platform bearing the main drum (about 3 feet in diameter), which has been awaiting them all day. The goal is to outcompete each other in an effort to get their drum chosen to ride on the platform with the main drum. Presumably the winners get bragging rights for the rest of the year if they accomplish this. Again, it’s all done in a spirit of friendly competition, and everyone’s clearly having a blast.
During the two or three hours before the winners are declared, new bands of young men continue arriving with their drum and showing off before the crowds of people. I counted nine in total, so perhaps one for each of the floats from earlier in the day? They plant the poles bearing the drums vertically, like flag poles, then begin swaying the tops back and forth while chanting their team’s particular battle cry. The drum sits about 8 feet off the ground during all of this. Fueled by sake, which they drink and then spray over each other in a fine mist, the nimble and muscular young men sing, chant, and generally ham it up for the crowds. After some time has passed, and they’ve worked their courage to the sticking point, they begin taking turns running up the backs of their fellows, perching on the drum, and waving to exhort the crowd to cheer for them as the pole sways back and forth. Then they vault to the top of the pole, carefully position it around their navel, and then fling themselves out horizontally, spreadeagled, balancing a scary distance off the ground, much to the delight of the crowd. (Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of this part; I didn’t want to be the dumbass tourist who flashed someone in the eyes and caused them to fall from the pole.) When they’re done performing, they descend: some stand on the drum and exhort the crowd again, others descend upside down like pole dancers in a strip club, some vault down off the backs of their buddies. Sometimes two climb the pole at the same time: one vaults to the top, while the other hangs off the pole beneath them. Nobody fell, but there were a few near misses.
By 9 PM, everyone’s there, and the square is packed with tourists (mostly Japanese). Most (and sometimes all of the poles) are crowned by a sequence of spreadeagled young men, each taking their turn. Much noise and chanting and singing and spraying of sake. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay to see how the rest of it turned out; we were both exhausted, and after the sun fell, Shoshanna grew increasingly cold. We left shortly after 9, headed home by train, both fled downstairs for a soak in the hot tubs (scalding but delightful), followed by a hot shower and (at least for me), falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Miscellaneous notes: Despite how much fun this festival was, we were two of the very small handful of westerners in the crowd. It doesn’t seem to be well-advertised other than to Japanese tourists, which is a shame, because it really was fun. The entire festival was aswarm with young children, ranging from flocks of school kids (who I took to calling “ducklings” because of their yellow baseball caps) to tweenagers. Unlike a typical western festival, there was not a single policeman (or first-aider, for that matter) anywhere in sight. There were many officials directing traffic on the street, waving flags to control traffic and pedestrians, but they didn’t seem to be police; they certainly weren’t armed or armored like a western police office. Japan is a very civilized country, and you can apparently rely on the people to behave like civilized folks.