Playing with fire

This weekend I attended a lantern festival in Koga. It was great because this is the first festival Koga has had since I have lived here and it was so much fun. First, let me explain the main event of this festival and why it is so exciting. The fine citizens of Koga create their own six-man community teams and prepare for this festival for a few months prior. Each team makes their own paper lantern and practices maneuvering it back and forth in a straight line, while it is hoisted 35 meters above the ground on a large bamboo tripod of sorts. If it sounds complicated, that is because it is. I tried to get some good pictures, so check those out for a visual.

They create a huge corridor outside made of bamboo to serve as a track of sorts for the teams to travel up and down. There must have been about 30 teams or more participating, so they split all the teams into 3 rounds and then the top 3 winners from each round competed in the finals. So there are ten teams competing at once and the object is to walk from one end of the corridor to the other without letting your lantern be destroyed by another team. All of these are traditional lanterns mind you, so they are lighted by candles - with fire. If you saw the way those tripods worked, they are extremely wide, so that corridor starts off very crowded and it is insane watching those teams try and shuffle their way forward with a mass of people and bamboo in front of them. The most enjoyable part for the spectators however is watching the lanterns way up in the air. As the teams crash their poles into one another, lanterns are knocked from their stable positions, and it is common to see a lantern spontaneously burst into flames because the candle has been knocked off kilter. The whole crowd gets really excited and everyone is cheering for victory of their respective teams and hoping to see some fire!

While all the lantern excitement is happening, there are booths set up all along the street selling copious amounts of food. Everything is made right there before your eyes and you have your choice of okonomiyaki to freshly cooked whole squid on a stick! They have candied apples, and strawberries, plums and apricots. Also there are many street performers playing traditional Japanese drums and dancing in kimonos.

While walking through the festival I ran into many of my students from all my different schools. They all recognized me, and stopped to talk to me and see how I was enjoying my first festival. It was pretty cool, because they clearly didn't expect me to show up at their festival, but seemed pretty happy that I was there enjoying their culture so much. I also rand into Mr. and Mrs. Ishiki and Mio. They were also having a great time as a family and Mio was happy to see me.

The weather was freezing cold compounded about 100 times because the wind was so strong to boot. At one point I thought my hands were going to fall off, but I am happy to report that all is well and all my phalanges are intact. I am really happy to have gone to my first festival in my little Koga town and I am excited for the next one - but I have no clue when that will be.