Week 60: ...wait...SIXTY?!

60?!  WEEK SIXTY?!

...

Wow.

Ok...

Well!  Last week I said goodbye to my schools, so this week I said hello to my new schools!  I say "new" but two of them, I taught at last year.  So really, they're welcoming me back.  It's nice.  Comfortable.  And a lot of the kids remember me and are just so happy to see me!  That's always nice.  I still did my same "introduction" lesson, because I only taught it to them once.  Over a year ago.  I was pretty sure they didn't remember ANYTHING from it.  And I was right!  :P

I was sick all week, and kept wavering between "I'm fine as long as I'm moving" and "I'm fine as long as I'm NOT moving"  Which, of course, is not an option when you teach.  I just did my best and died each night. :P

The new school is my Friday school.  Smallest school I've worked at yet, but should be fun.  They seemed a little nervous when I came in.  I think it was because I was exuding confidence and ease.  I guess they figured I either knew what I was doing or had not idea what I was getting into, because one of their first questions was "have you taught at a Japanese school before?"

Well, ok, the fact that I can never remember exactly how formal to be in this situation probably didn't help either. I was tired. I just wanted to sit!

Anyhow, I reassured them I knew what I was doing.  They were like "our sixth graders are...very energetic" and I was like "your sixth graders don't scare me."

And they didn't.  Suckers are practically comatose. Gonna have to work on them...

Also, Halloween is coming.

Halloween is gaining popularity quite rapidly here.  I can see a difference between last year and this year even!

I picked up a new hat!

So I've been planning (re: unearthing) my Halloween lesson.  Good way to introduce myself, right? ;)

The weather all week was absolutely beautiful, so of course I was too sick to enjoy it.  I was feeling mostly better by Friday, but of course the weather started getting cooler again by then.  (OF COURSE)

Saturday, I went to TWO festivals!  The Jidai Festival and the fire festival!

Both were in Kyoto, where all festivals are absolutely packed, so we showed up early.

too early.

We didn't care. we sat near the river, we ate some bread stuffs we picked up.

it had fruit and custard in!

And admired the birds.

have you ever seen one of these fly? they fly with their neck all folded up, it looks really funny.

After a while, we figured we had waited long enough and got our spots.

front row!  We just had to stand there a long time

The parade starts at the Castle and goes along the streets, so they clear the streets as it goes.  Finally they closed down our street

YAAAAAYYY

The Jidai Matsuri (matsuri means festival) is a parade of Historical Japan.  It's a representation of historical processions through the ages, and they start at the more modern ages and go backwards.

I want one of these hats, but how would I get it home?

which is why we have a guy in a suit.

There were lots to see, so I'll just get some of them up.

it looks like they attacked a wookie

I wonder what prompted the change from black fur to white?

See? Modern. This is a military patrol.

And then there were these guys

The little guy in front is so cute!

They always had a bunch of them as breaks between the different eras shown, so of course we referred to them as "End of an Era"

They had "historical figures" or people dressed up as historical figures, and so you knew who was who, they had flag holders labeling them.

that is that guy's name. No, I can't read it.

Don't know who he is either, but I'm going to guess NOT a warrior. Can you imagine the battlefield?

How do I know these things?  Well, my friend picked up a pamphlet, and it had a play by play of who was being shown.

see? guy with long train!

So we always knew where we were in the parade!  It was pretty cool, but sadly she lost the pamphlet...

Still, more to see!

he was really having trouble with that flag

procession's gotta have tribute

we still have no idea what that is.

more soldiers/tribute holders

nope. still no clue what's supposed to be in there.

AND End of an Era!  These guys were so handy.

They had famous ladies too!  Remember these represent SPECIFIC famous ladies. I just don't know their names.

princess

famous poet

famous fashion designer

Another famous literary lady

...famous madame...

priestess who invented the prayer dance that became Kabuki

The last lady is my favorite, simply because she is just so DIFFERENT from the others. They way she held herself, the way she walked, etc.  Very confident and comfortable.

Ok, back to snapshots,

what an interesting hat.

they're so cute!

that ox looks done with it. 

...I want to try that bow. LOOK AT IT.

POINTY

this samurai set himself apart by having giant horns on his helmet.

instead of big sails, like this guy.

I liked this, check out the outfit on the right. There were a few with this miss-matched pattern.

see?

Now, you'll notice there is no western influence here.  Why is this?  Because for a long stretch of time, Japan was closed to outside influence.  They locked their borders and entrenched themselves.  This was, of course, not always the case, which is why if you go a little FURTHER back in time, we had one character dressed like this.

LOVE IT

LOOK AT THAT CAPE!

ISN'T THAT GREAT?!  He looks right out of the Italian court. (where better to court Italians?)

That was really the only nod they gave to it, I guess showing that it was a big influence at the time.  As we are going further back in time, we see the times when the Chinese influenced their fashion and when they had their own thing going on.

such color!

so cute!

off to battle

...that is a TALL HORSE

And yes, there's a video...

part of me really hopes the "trees growing out of hats" thing was a style.  I'm told they represent the four seasons, which I really would have gotten if I'd paid more attention to the trees rather than where they were placed...

these represent the ladies from northern Kyoto who would come in to sell wood and Charcoal.

these ladies represent those from Western Kyoto who would come in and sell produce

this is a court person. I think... You can see the fashion getting older here.

because of traffic, they had to make stops, and hey, sometimes chairs are good.

The next one's a little involved. Apparently, there was a time when the current ruling guy needed to hide his army, so they disguised themselves as famous archers, but of course, that meant they had to pass the archer test.  Which was to ride a horse and hit three targets in succession.

Archer on horse

three targets. They did not demonstrate. Probably a good thing.

still going back in time, see how much simpler the hair was?

THE BOW, I WANT THE BOW

this horse is wearing sandals.

Historical figure and retainers.

You can really see the Chinese/Korean influence here.

someone of royal court

army with shields

Umbrella guy

As they got farther back, the pamphlet made sure to let us know that they knew about the historical accuracy due to ancient writings and tomb excavations.

This was as far as they went back, and then they had the "offerings to the shrine" because this really was a temple holiday thing.

the kids are dressed as Buddhist creatures

they represent fortune and long life.

the people look as done as the horses.

soldier peoples. (painted shields this time)

offerings from the local restaurants.

flower offerings

...I don't know.

And it's over!

Yes, a lot of pictures, but it was very neat, in all. Very historical.

We had been standing for a long time, so we looked for a cafe to sit at for a little.  She knew of a few of them. Like the parfait cafe.

why yes, that DOES cost $500

They had smaller ones, of course.  Still, the line was long, so we went somewhere else.  After sitting for a little, we felt better, so we went to see the Fire festival!

Big mistake.

Ok, so, I kinda knew we were getting in trouble when we got to the station to get TO the town with the festival.

line

line

line

The line for the train went THROUGH the nearby subway station, up the stairs and DOWN THE STREET on the other SIDE of the STATION.

When we FINALLY made it to the train, we were shoved in like sardines.  It was BAD. There were two cars on the train up there, and I was in a group of 5-6 people.  Three of the group were shoved into the space BETWEEN the cars.  It was closed in, but still very scary for them.  I only got out of it by virtue of putting my arm across and letting myself be squished into the side of the door. :P

We got up there, and it was PACKED.  For the first bit, you couldn't even SEE anything. Yes. You couldn't see FIRE.  I get the feeling the little town (almost a village) didn't LIKE that their festival had gotten that popular so quickly. (the last two years, really)  They had a loop for people to walk so they could see and not block anything.  While it DID help a LOT with seeing the festival, I couldn't really take pictures of it.

at least not ones you would recognize.

And the entire time they had police and interpreters yelling through megaphones "keep moving, don't stop in the middle of the street, make way, don't block the fire carriers!"

Over half the loop was AWAY from the festival, to get us back to the station.  We thought maybe they'd funnel us into a field or meadow where they'd have festival stuff set up, but nope!  They just put us back at the station!  The whole loop took about 2 hours, and there was a lot of shuffle, squeeze, wait.

I mean, it was fun chatting with everyone, and it was a beautiful little town, and I'd like to go back sometime!  During the day when there is no festival going on.  The rest of the group was like "they're gonna do more! They'll light a big Kanji on the mountain on fire and stuff!"

"Great, when do they do that?"

"Ten!"

Looks at watch.  8:00. Looks at giant crowd. Nope! Have fun!

I also live farther away than them, 10 was the LAST train I could have taken to get back to my place without 5 miles of walking.  I was just...done.

Packed onto the train back, but it was better, because when I got up there, they COULDA shoved us on the train but were like "would you rather wait for the next?" and we said "YES." And so we got to SIT DOWN.  I say we because I kinda latched onto a group of other peoples in front of me in line. One was another ALT from Interac, but from Mizuru!  (north of here)  so that was neat. :)

By the time I got back to my place, I was so glad I had cut out early(ish) and I died, exhausted. :)

Glad I'm finally well! :D