Last weekend, we had a chance to go down to Morioka (2 hour drive, $90 in tolls) to see the Tohoku Rokkon Festival. Today, I am going to do something new. I have invited my friend, Rachel to be my guest blogger. Rachel lives a couple houses down on our street, she has been in Misawa for almost two years, originally from Idaho, she is married to a lawyer, wears high heels, has two adorable little girls (whom you’ll meet in her post), cooks fantastic shrimp dishes, makes me laugh all the time and has been blogging for centuries.
-----------------------***********************--------------------------First, a little background info. Since the devastating earthquake last year, the northern regions of Japan (called the Tohoku region) decided to create a festival that combines the 6 different festivals of the area. The result: one massive collection of polite Asians, standing in a lot of different lines for food, entertainment, and the bus.... oh the bus... I'll get to that later.
Anyways.... after "that corner" half of the families seceded from Mormon/American Union and planted ourselves in a shady spot, far away from what would be considered an "optimal view" of the parade.
I was able to see the first act, that of the Lantern Festival.
Apparently, after this first act they dropped the lanterns so no one else got to see it, including our friends that we ditched :( - who knew, laziness would pay off?
Mina is all legs these days. She is a perfect candidate for a monkey leash. I love how she thinks she is running wild with her monkey while in actuality she is on a rope controlled strictly by mom. Props to whomever invented that.
And who needs parades? We left after the first act and I had to find this "bowl of rice" to take our Christmas card photo with. I was feeling overwhelmed with the festival until we had this picture taken, then I felt accomplished. Thank you small child who dressed up as a bowl of rice, you made my day complete.
Just another view here.
Tamzin, Marie; Laura Beth. I think they were playing "Scooby Doo" here. Marie was honorarily inducted into the game as they started calling her "Velma" (b/c she has glasses). Cute :)
Also, this is supposed to be a Castle... or the remnants of one? I have no idea, but we couldn't find the Morioka Castle. Just so you know.
And lastly, the bus line.... oh the bus line.
As we were done we headed to the bus line that takes you back to your car (we parked in a lot, far out of town) we saw the line was very long so we headed to the end of it. We tried to join what we thought was the end until the traffic cop pointed across an intersection. The line went from 3 people- wide on a city sidewalk to an ENTIRE ROAD CLOSED DOWN FILLED FROM SIDE TO SIDE WITH STANDING PEOPLE. THE. ENTIRE. ROAD. People, quiet, facing forward, calm as can be. As I walked by the people my soul WAS CRUSHED. My soul has never been crushed by the sight of a line before. Not even on the hottest day at Disney Land or at an Airport bathroom line after a long flight.
I will give them props. I thought it would take 6 hours to get through the line. I thought I would just lay down and die there, surrender myself to the Japanese city streets and start sending my children out panhandle so we could make a living as we created a new life in the middle of the road with our would-be Japanese neighbors. But no. It took 1 hour to get into a bus and a half hour to get to the car.
We were saved.
At least we got a great picture while we stood in line.
Well, at least one.
The moral of the story is Japanese are better than American's at standing line. Slightly less dramatic, maybe.-------------------------------------------------------------------------
All right. I am back (Lyana that is). I realize that I will make it a super long post by adding my part AND I am risking to lose your attention, but please read on.
Rachel’s experience was very similar to ours…crowds, crowds and more crowds. We did manage to find a shady spot (“shady” as in we were not baking in the sun the whole time), where we could sort of watch the parade….we were probably twenty or so rows back from the parade route. So, I must add a few pictures of ours to this post.
The crowd.
I cannot remember the order in which each prefecture displayed its float/performance. I know for sure that Aomori (ours) prefecture was first. This was a float from Nebuta festival.
These ladies with hats were from Yamagata prefecture.
The performance with fans were from Sendai festival.
This was from Fukushima prefecture (traditional Japanese mask).
In Fukushima prefecture carrying a huge Waraji is part of celebration. Waraji is a straw sandal.
Finally, part of the Morioka Sansa Odori festival was displayed. There were a couple hundred of these “dancers with red hats”.
After a little over one hour of the festival, we were all exhausted from standing and entertaining Mark. I made sure that Katya and Alex were closer to the front of the crowd so they could actually see the festival. Mark was a bit more work, but he did great too.
Little did we know….we still had an enormous line awaiting us at the bus stop (although it took us just one hour to get to our parking spot from the time we got in line).
Beautiful views of Mt. Iwatesan on the way back.
Good bye, Morioka! That was the last time we were visiting you! (I only mean it in a good way):)
No comments:
Post a Comment