Sara- Time Warp to September 2008 (Yabusame Festival)

Well I finally got the video put together. I hate Apple iMovie and this may be the last movie I make with it.
Anyway, back in September 2008, Patrick and I skipped work to go see Yabusame which I believe is part of the two or three day Hachimangu festival...

Yabusame is archery on horseback. The ground for the event is blessed by the Shinto priests, and if I remember correctly, horse archery was not used only for warfare in Iwate, but it was also used as a way to scare off demons and so there were also priests at the event.

Sara-2008 recap

I said I would write about all my previous adventures, but I never quite got around to it unfortunately. So instead, I mashed up all the things I did into one movie. There is the all city track and field meet, Yabusame (horse archery festival in Morioka), the school festival and my trip to Yamagata with my teachers. I got the perfect music for the movie for Christmas from friends back home, G and Ryan. A big thank you goes to them since I wouldn't have done it otherwise. The music really sums up my feelings about 2008 I think.

Sara-Sansa Festival '08

From August 1st to the 4th, Morioka has it's Sansa Festival. Sansa is a type of traditional dance here in Iwate. There are many different dance troupes that perform during this time. Companies and neighborhoods put together troupes of dancers, drummers, and flutists. They parade down the main street of Morioka in their summer kimonos (yukata). Children and adults take part in the parade. Many families perform together. I saw some of my students participating as dancers for their neighborhood troupe. It's a very festive parade. Everyone dances, even the drummers and flutists. They also have an announcer who announces each troupe, and when the troupe gets to the finish line she announces "Thank you for your wonderful performance."
I have put together a brief movie with the original sound so you can hear the music. The dancers are chanting something like "Sakkora Choiwa yasse!" I'm guessing that this is from their local dialect, or something much older or a mixture of local and old Emishi. (The Emishi were the natives of Tohoku) I have heard that there are about 20,000 performers and around 5,000 drums. In the video you will also see performers wearing large flowers on their heads or a straw hat. Those are the traditional Sansa costumes.

Sara-Baseball finals and horse festival movie

Today I had a surprise at work. Instead of classes the whole school went out to the big ballpark because our team went into the finals. (We lost, Catherine's school won. 0-1) So when I got back to work, I didn't have a lot to do to fill the time. After 3, I finished studying Japanese and by 3:30 I was getting bored of reading so I made this little slide show/video of the horse festival I went to on Saturday. Hopefully it gives a better idea of the main street. Unfortunately I was stuck to one place so it's not much. I replaced the sound of all the bells on the horses with music. If anyone really wanted to hear what they sounded like, just think of 100 cow bells, and hooves.

Sara-Chagu Chagu Umakko

Yesterday Patrick and I went to the Chagu-chagu Umakko festival. The festival celebrates the horses of Iwate/Morioka. 100 horses came and walked down the main street to a temple. The horses were elaborately decorated and children were riding them. Before the horses there were a few bands and other parade festivities, including a super hero. The horses rested at a river and there you could see them up close. However it was raining and there were thousands of people so Patrick and I left before seeing them close. The horses were really beautiful and it's definitely a must see for horse lovers.

Sara- Hachimangu Festival

Patrick and I went to the Hachimangu festival on September 15th. The festival is for three days, from the 14th to the 16th. The 16th was also a national holiday (The day would roughly translate to 'Respect the Elderly day'.) so it was a day off for everyone.


Hachimangu Festival is the festival of Hachimangu Shrine which is of the Shinto religion. (Shinto-shrines, Buddhism-temples)
Unfortunately I don't have any information about the festival but it was very fun to go to and beautiful to watch. They have an evening parade of floats down the main street, and on the 16th, they had an archery on horseback ritual performance. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out the time for it and missed that but hopefully I will see it next year and post about it. The archery is called Yabusame and it is a very traditional and time honored practice.

Here are some pictures that I took.





The floats are very elaborate and you can see the male kabuki like figures in the front and the women figures were on the back of the floats.

The large orange gate way is called a Torii and it is the gate way for all Shinto shrines.




Inside the grounds of the shrine, there are many food and game vendors. As you can see, you have the typical cotton candy vendors, but you also have game booths such as 'Kingyosukui' which translates to 'Goldfish scoop'. You get to scoop up live goldfish and you can keep the ones that you catch. If you have the bad luck of not getting any, you usually get to keep one. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a picture of such a booth, but there's also the 'kujibiki' booths where you pay to get a scrap of paper with a number. Then you get the prize according to the number.
There are also food booths so Patrick and I had dinner there by going around and trying out different foods. Here's a yakitori booth (shishkabobs-usually chicken).
As you can see, there were a lot of people there, but that's only half of the booths and people at the shrine.



































At the shrine, there are many places to pray. This is a little shrine but I'm not sure to what god it is dedicated to. Then there were the Zodiac shrines which are the tiny round stones that are hollow inside. Inside you would see the figures of each zodiac animal. Patrick and I went to see the Rat shrine.
Then this is Hachimangu. It is very big and perhaps you can not see, but there are long thick ropes that hang down. These ropes have bells attached to the top and you throw in some money into a collection box, then ring the bell, clap your hands three times and pray or make a wish to the gods.
There were also dancers at the shrine.

Obon

Obon is in the middle of August and is a holiday lasting several days where families visit the graves of their ancestors. Obon is a celebration of the Shinto religion and the belief behind the celebration is that the spirits of one's ancestors returns to Earth to visit. For this reason, lanterns are often light out side of houses to guid ancestors back to homes. At the end of the week, special lanterns are lit and are released into a near by river to guid the spirits back into the spirit realm. In many places in Japan, this special event at a river is called Toronagashi.

In Morioka, however, it is called Funekko Oroshi. This is because part of the celebration involves setting aflame boats (about twenty, one for each neighborhood) full of fireworks on a river. (In Japanese, the word for boat is fune). Although bad for the environment, it is quite a spectacle.

As the people (mostly men, and a few women) who pull the boats down the river are nearly naked, it is also I imagine quite dangerous, since the fireworks and debris could be seen spilling out of the boats.

At the end of the festival, several hundred fireworks were shot off as men set paper lanterns out to float down the river.

Watch the video (about three and a half minutes long, no sound) below. The people are a little compressed because the original video is widescreen but on the internet it has to be a square rather than a rectangle.