Kawagoe Matsuri

This weekend has been chock full of traditional Japanese experiences. And why, you might ask, is that? I have two words – Kowagoe Matsuri: a giant festival that Kowagoe (the prefecture I am living in) is famous for. And what it involves is every neighborhood making these huge floats, called Dashi, on which people play drums and traditional folk characters dance, and which are on wheels that everyone from the neighborhood pulls. What this sounds like is a sort of Fourth of July feeling, and the last parade with floats I went to was horribly boring and I kind of hated it. America needs to take lessons on how to make parades awesome. Turn them into festivals. Dashi are way more bad ass than any cheap American float because some of them were made a hundred years ago, out of wood and lacquer and silk. The youngest one was about two years old, made entirely out of wood and metal.
On Saturday I went with Jen pretty early to the festival, which took up most of the streets in Kawagoe and the streets were filled with food vendors and people selling various cheap plastic items. And around the various neighborhoods the Dashi are pulled and sometimes the floats meet up and they ‘fight’ which means they have a dance off between one floats character dancer vs. the other floats dancer. The dancers are put into costumes based on Japanese folk characters and the movements are the classic movements of the character. There was a drunk, a fox, the most beautiful lady, the stupid man, a pig and a bear. So on Sat Jen and I passed through the shops and then got some crepes on a side street. Where a random Japanese man took our picture and then had his daughter stand with us for a photo. Which was yet another weird Gaijin moment. And more specifically a weird blonde gaijin moment – which I generally have whenever I hang out alone with Jen. We happened upon some other JSP’s and some Dashi and I took pictures. Unfortunately on Saturday my camera ran out of batteries. But we had some beer and yakisoba and then spent an expensive couple hours singing karaoke. All in all a fun night.




But the true cultural experiences happened on Sunday because on Sunday I got to be part of the JSP group that actually helped pull a Dashi. We had to wear Jackets and we kind of helped pull for an hour and then everyone took a million pictures of us. I had a great time though – any excuse to dress up and take a million pictures of the awesomeness that is the Dashi is fine by me. The coordinator for the event was this adorable Japanese man who kept trying to explain what was going on and he wore a red coat and was very earnest.
After the float thing I got lunch consisting of okanomiake – which is a cabbage, egg, mayonnaise, soy sauce pancake. And delicious. As well as eating some fried chicken. The thing about the Kawagoe Matsuri was that there were booths for food everywhere. And not a lot of different kinds of food but a ton of booths selling pretty much five of the same things: chocolate covered bananas, okanomiake, octopus and squid, takoyaki(which is balls of okinomiake with octopus in then), and yakitori chicken. And a bizarre version of gyros. The thing to do was buy delicious food and wander around watching different Dashi get pulled around and catching the odd Dashi fight. And occasionally playing rigged Japanese fair games where you could win cheap plastic crap or goldfish. And the odd tiny turtle. I went home after lunch to do some homework but came back at night to get night photographs of the Dashi because at night they break out the lanterns. We sort of wandered around for a while and I ate a snow-cone, yakisoba, octopus legs, and eventually cotton candy. Because I love cotton candy and it at least came in a neat plastic bag. But the group kind of split apart due to one of the JSP’s gorgeous host sister – her presence enough to distract anyone with any testosterone. And because the Dashi were being somewhat elusive. At the very end of the night though I got to see a three way fight between three floats and it was awesome. I took videos and a thousand pictures because between the people in gorgeous traditional costumes, giant wood carts iced with gold and paintings and people, and the musicians and dancers the festival was a visual feast. So of course my flickr page will have a lot more pictures to check out.