2001-08-16 - 4:58 p.m.
Tip for regular readers: sometimes I post more than one entry at once, so check the list of older entries to make sure you haven't missed anything.
Most of the country, including me, is off this week for O-bon, a Buddhist festival which celebrates the time when the dead are believed to return home to their places of birth. Just like everyone in the US goes back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Japanese return home during O-bon.
Seeing as our homes are very far away, on Tuesday I made a day trip to Kamakura with several other JETs. Kamakura is a city south of Yokohama (about an hour south of Tokyo by train) which is home to many of Japan's most famous temples. Kamakura, along with Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nikko, make up Japan's most famous sights. We visited four temples and Daibutsu, a giant sculpture of Buddha. We purchased little "temple books," which for 300 yen we got inscribed and stamped by caligraphers at each temple. The cemetaries are beautiful -- lush mossy plots spotted with ancient graves glowing with the embers of recently lit incense. As we trekked along, we were followed by the scorching heat and the shrill sound of cicadas. We got some great ice cream -- watermelon soft-serve sprinkled with salt and black sesame seeds.
On Wednesday morning, Lynn (my co-JET) and I were met by a Japanese English teacher who answered our innumerable questions about daily life -- do you know a good masseuse? what should we wear to meet the mayor? does the department store deliver? -- Sensei's English is great, so we took advantage of her availability to us. Then she took us on a drive through the countryside of Kimitsu. Kimitsu is a very wide city -- where we live in the far western tip is pretty urban, but just a few minutes east on the expressway, Kimitsu is all rice and vegetable farms, mountains, cherry and bamboo forest. Sensei took us out to a rural soba restaurant where they make the soba noodles by hand -- the restaurant closes for the day when they run out of noodles. She then invited us to view the O-bon fireworks with her family that night.
Sensei picked us up at 6:30 and we headed to Kisarazu, the neigboring big city. Traffic was at a near standstill, with tens of thousands of people coming into Kisarazu for the fireworks. Think fourth of July traffic. As we crept into downtown Kisarazu, the road was lined with hundreds of people streaming toward the festival. Many girls were wearing their summer kimonos --from 4 year-olds tripping over their shoes to eighteen year-olds with orange hair chatting away on cell phones as they walked.
We met up with Sensei's husband, a jr. high science teacher, and walked to a hotel owned by their family friend. We acsended to the rooftop, where a lively party was in progress. Lanterns hung from the railings, and the tables were decorated with all sorts of finger foods. Kids were running around in huge indoor slippers, banging each other over the head with paper fans. Young couples rushed to pose for snapshots in front of the giant fireworks as they exploded. From the city center below, a loudspeaker announced the corporate or civic sponsor of each round of fireworks before they were set off. And they went off for a LONG time. In the U.S., your average fireworks show lasts 20, maybe 30 minutes. These fireworks went off for nearly 2 hours, an astounding display. Sensei's husband told me that the fireworks used to be longer, but the show has been cut back due to Kisarazu's financial woes.
After the party, we headed back to Sensei's house to wait out the exit traffic before the drive back to Kimitsu. The streets were packed with people, and colorful vendors lined the streets, selling all sorts of blow-up animals, fried foods, and sweets. Back at Sensei's house, we watched a bit of the news translated into English and discussed Japanese current events. Sensei's husband, a young man himself, was distressed about how the youth of Japan seem to be losing thier "Japanese hearts," dyeing their hair strange colors, littering, and as Sensei pointed out, sitting directly on the ground, even on the train platforms. Generation gaps the world over.
Things I'm beginning to miss: Chik Nuggets; Nutella, TV I can understand (besides the Bionic Woman which is on once a week here), classes at Vassar, chocolate Teddy Grahams (who knew?), cheddar cheese, kickboxing classes, the Chesapeake Bay.
