Fire Festival

Hello, all you out there in T.V. Land. Today is a day,
yes, today is now night.
And what a great day it was!

First of all, let's set the mood. I'm listening to Avey Tare, of Animal Collective,'s project with Kria Brekken, of Mum (with an accent markie on the u), for the first time now. It is awesome. I'm not even a full song in. Yes.

Now, if you're listening along, you are also in a similarly tripped out mood and can follow my train of thought perhaps more real to the way I felt it when I had it (right now).

Today was midterm testing so I did...nothing. EXCEPT, three sections of practice in my kanji workbook, which was really nice and I learned a lot and felt productive. I also got a fairly good vibe from the other teachers, like the vice-principal, from whom I usually get a weird vibe. The past couple of weeks some of the teachers've seemed a little cold or removed, while actually others have been friendlier, so maybe some of them are just a little stressed right now, what with preparing for the midterms and what not. But anyways, we're definitely in free thought mode now, as my sentences are just kind of moving to the flow of my thoughts. Yeah, so I could've left at like 1, like any of the other teachers, but the others were staying longer to work, so I thought I would. For the first time, the English teacher I work with let me help him with something when I asked him if I could help him with anything. It was really nice to be able to be productive and do some work while others were working all around me. I got right on checking off marks by every student's name to mark that they had turned in their worksheets. Then, I realized, I had a list of all the students in the first year's names in front of me! So, I got to writing down all their names and trying to match them with some of the names that were written in English on the English worksheets, thus finding out some of the names I didn't know before. So much kanji today, though...my eyes were tired after writing the names of half the students in the school so I decided to call it a day and go home.

On my way home, I thought, "What should I do?" I had earlier thought about going into the city since I was getting home earlier by an hour now, 3 when I first had the idea, but my brain was warped from all the studying and up-close writing. I need some excercise, to move my body around, I thought. Maybe I'll go for a run, even though it's cold. In any case, I thought as I sat on the bench overlooking the school field, I'll walk home, because I just feel like a nice walk.

As I passed the city Health and Wellness Center (?), where they give cooking classes (I think) and activities for older people, as well as take care of elementary school children after school while their waiting for the bus, I ran into the usual group of kids waiting around in the parking lot, playing. I was in no rush, and the immediacy of riding a bike was nowhere to be found in myself so I stopped by to chat. They were having a relay and invited me to, "join us! join us!" Haha, okay, I can't think of anything to do right now because my brain's dulled, I'll just have some fun with these kids for a while. So I ran relay races around the parking lot with them, then we played tag, or "oni goko." I was the oni (demon) first so I ran around and tried to catch them. It was really fun, and actually really got me breathing. Then, the daycare teachers invited us all in for snacks! Snacks!? Yes!! I was happy to accept the invitation and enjoy a delicious rice cracker, candy, and warm tea snack with the kiddies and the two teachers. We translated some hard to translate Japanese customary sayings for before and after eating. Itadakimasu, or "we humbly receive this food that was given to us by the people who worked hard to prepare it and the plants and animals that gave their bodies to become it," became "Let's have our snacks!" and "Gochisousama deshita, or "the meal was delicious, thank you," became "Let's finish!" Haha. But hey, that's not too bad, I suppose. When the teachers asked the kids what they thought the English versions of the phrases would be one boy kept answering, "Let's go!" which was really funny. Really, haha.

But anyways, after that, we did more relays, oni goko, and then played badmitton. It was my first time! Really fun. And now I am going to eat home-made canned azuki (red bean) soup with mochi cubes chopped out of the parts of the mochi from that festival a long time ago that didn't get moldy. Mmm. Warm and with water. I remember I made this and ate it with a guy who lived in the same guest house as me when I was in Kyoto for a few weeks back at the end of study abroad. Wow. Cool.

It was interesting to see the different personalities of the kids. One was the confident boy who took charge of everything and told everyone how they were going to pick teams and in what order the people on his team would run and everyone just kind of took it as nothing special. There was another boy who was really attached to me, more sensitive than the other boy, and although just as athletic as the other kids seemed much more attuned to expressing emotions. The two girls I first ran with were not so keen on telling everybody what to do, just enjoyed running. Another boy, who I think was younger, got close to crying a lot more than the others, but had a beautiful smile when he was laughing and having fun. Later, a girl who was a little older came over and played badmitton with us. She was super confident, not forceful, just wanted to play, on any team, and she was good. Later, she brought out a unicycle and started trying to ride that around. Oh yeah, all the kids at the elementary schools have access to unicycles and one school in particular trains their kids to be suuuper good at them. They had an awesome performance on them at their sports day. It was sweet.

So, after about an hour and 48 minutes of that, I finally walked home. They gave me a wreath with candy glued to the edges and a card inside that says, "Thank you for your visit," wrapped in plastic. I was so surprised and happy. It was really awesome.

So now, this album is finally getting to the weird, dark song. Oooh, I like it. Although, I've been thinking, there are some happy-ish-sounding songs I really like, maybe I should move more in that direction and try making stuff like that.

I went to an amazing festival (haha, I typed frestival at first) last Saturday night. One of the JETs had been going on a mountain walk and happened upon a shrine, where he met an old lady who was some kind of monk who told him about a festival that would occur there after nightfall on Saturday night. He told us about it, and a few of us decided to go. I'm glad I did.

He asked us to bring flashlights, but I forgot mine, which is actually a headlamp, but lo and behold, when we borrowed a couple from his landlord, one of them was a big purple headlamp! Yeah, I called that one so fast. It kept slipping from my head as we were walking but it felt good just to have it there. Yeah, it was cool.

We weren't sure if anyone was even going to be there and the way up looked bleak, but when we got there, we found a bunch of people gathered around and by the looks of things, they were just setting up. As we found out, that night was to be a fire festival in honor of people who had died of unnatural causes, like suicide or accidents, as far as my ears could tell. Holy shit, the re-reversed version of this album is so cool!! It sounds completely different!! I didn't even know the whole first song was guitar-based. At first, I was a little surprised to see no food booths or loud taiko music, but not really too disappointed. It added an air of more seriousness to the event, which was only to deepen as the night went on.

So the ceremony was about to begin, or so the monk told us as he invited us into the coutyard of the shrine. The monks were off to the side, where they blew this cool horn that reminded me of Aztec conch horns or some kind of Viking horn, and read passages. It was pretty normal, nice, and -oh-some of the audience members are joining in on, that's cool. It added a nice feeling to be semi-surrounded by momentary prayer chants. Then, that's when it got intense.

The monks started chanting and one of them started hitting a rhythm on a little percussion box that looked like a little animal, I think. I think it was just straight eighth notes, now that I think about it. Just a constant rhythm. Then all of a sudden, EVERYBODY in the whole courtyard was chanting together, saying a syllable on every eighth note or more. Constant sound, words, human voices, in one flat tone, all around you. Everywhere. Then, it rises, maybe half a step. Then, back down. Still, constantly coming from all around us. And it didn't matter if someone ran out of breath (it would have been impossible for anyone to keep saying the chant the whole time without missing a beat to take a breath), because there were so many people that almost everyone else would be able to keep saying it during that moment. And then four monks starting shaking these rods with golden rings on them in a rhythm of down, down, up, down, down, up, and I figured out later that the two people in the back row where doing it one beat behind the ones in front, so they were constantly flowing in and out of each other. It was amazing! It made me think immediately of how people first started doing those kind of chants, who knows how long ago, to put themselves in another state of mind, so that they could truly connect to something beyond themselves, pray, in a focused state. I don't know if that's true, but I'm pretty sure it is, and I know I've heard it in some kind of class, plus being there, in that courtyard, I totally went into another state and could see how it would work. We did that for maybe 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes? Maybe 25? I have no idea, but it was really long and I wanted it to go on forever.

Eventually, it did stop however. The monks moved up a stone staircase to an altar higher up in the mountain, as dramatic music played over a stereo. They wore maskes, like the Tengu, the god that is said to have always lived in the mountains in Japan. As they ascended, a younger boy dressed in casual clothes, rather than the white robes of the monks, read passages from the back of their area, marked off by a white sheet on the ground. I had seen him earlier and wondered if he was studying to become a monk.

They came back down after some time. And people began to chant again. Different chants, some I could actually make out partially because they were shorter and slower. But I couldn't pick out meanings, really. Something about two points and waiting, maybe. Another interesting thing was that that monk that the other JET had met before was the head monk. She basically led the entire thing, and had all the others waiting for her command. Veerrry interesting, especially for something as amazingly traditional as this ceremony seemed and taking into account that all those others taking her orders, besides one, were men.

After that part was done, they began distributing packages of wooden sticks with names written on them. The passed on? The family who was receiving the sticks? I don't know. What I do know is that monks started pouring sake on these standing iron torches arranged throughout the courtyard and lighting fires in them. Then people began putting the sticks in them and the fires grew really quickly. A kind woman who works at an old peoples' home in that city shared sticks with me. People gathered around the torches near them and stoked the fires. Children tried to throw sticks in from below, which would often sail through the fire to the other side, where an old lady, or maybe I, would pick them up and put them into the burning flames. It was a nice atmosphere. Just pick up any of the sticks you happen to find on the floor, or that were given to you, or that you just had, and stick them into the fire, as you felt the intense heat reflect on your face and brows pushing you back as soon as you had the stick in the blaze. And then drawing you back in when you had your next piece to add to the inferno.

Monks would go around with bamboo sticks and push out the bottoms of the fire where the wood had turned to charcoal or was ashing. Ashes were flying everywhere, burning my eyes with the smoke. I was standing in between four tourches, tending to the one on my front left. This went on for a long time, and really put me in another state of being, as well. Being constantly surrounded by intense heat, trying to always be aware enough not to have a hot ember go into my clothes or let the flames lick my hair, face, or clothes. And the other people seemed to be in that kind of state too. Dedicated to dedicating these fires to those who had passed on, to world peace, and to every person's happiness. The monks would scream as if they were possessed when they shoved the bottoms of the fires out, the same kind of scream one of them had done a few times even during the chants.

It looked a bit like this:




















































































Toward the end, I moved to the side. It was just getting to be so unbearably hot between those fires. A man began going around with blocks of wood, which he would hit with his fingers, move his hand around in a kind of form, say something that could have been some of kind prayer, give a barkish yell, and put one in each torch. And we listened to that woman describe the history of the ceremony, ask us to look into the sky at something I couldn't quite figure out, and slowly come down from our fevered wood-dashing and chanting into a relaxed through draining condition that felt somehow as if we had been purified by ourselves, though we were covered with the gray ashes of the trees we had just sacrificed to the blazing infernos of our prayers, emotions, and kindness.

The walk back was nice, as were the delicious azuki manju and amazake we received. We also were given fortunes but I don't know what mine says too clearly.

Life is interesting.