Ore wa Kuma Desu

sheesh. there's no way i'll ever be able to do justice to the doings of the last few days with this dinky little blog. i guess i'll go chronologically and start with friday night and the residence hall greeting party or whatever the hell it was called. i milled around for most of it talking to a few folks and picking at the food set out on the thirty some odd tables, general whatnot transpired, and then i met hina. hina is maybe almost 5 feet tall and whacked me in the gut three minutes after meeting her. a crazy japanese girl more along the order i'm accustomed to. we talked for a half hour or so, hina leaping or taking a swing at me intermitantly throughout, and then went over to a party in the "global village" area, the student apartments that some kids pay extra for to get their own bathroom, fridge and stove. there were ten or twelve people crammed into the room, passing around a brick of exotic wisconsin cheese and doing choreographed dances to some j-pop song about fire or something. hina brought some of her "how to speak american slang" books and read some of the entries, which included the terms "baldwin", as in "dude, you think you're so baldwin, but you're totally not even baldwin", and the insult "ass-eyes". but then guess what? are you ready? this is what happened: two japanese girls touched my beard in tandem. lets just stop for a second here and all travel back to that moment together. the ridiculously cute hina and her ridiculously cute friend rummaging through my face hairs and sqeaking to eachother in japanese. so, yeah, that was friday, i don't remember anything after that, having blacked out.

so saturday, another day i'll never be able to explain correctly, a large group took the train out to kakunodate for their season ending matsuri. we got there a few hours before most of the stuff started, and just walked around watching street stalls setting up. i ate at one that was serving some friggin delicious kebab things of asparagus wrapped in bacon. we were milling around at the kebab stand when we heard chanting and someone blowing a whistle down at the end of the street. we walked down and saw thirty or forty people pulling a giant wooden card with dancing girls in kimonos, taiko and shakuhachi players, and a papier mache tiger on it. the whistle blower was standing on the cart directing all the people chanting and pulling the cart around the streets. whenever they had to turn a corner, the rope pullers rushed under the front of the cart, lifted it with their backs and ran sideways to move the cart around, while everyone chanted, the drums and flutes played, and the director shouted, blew his whistle, and waved his arms around. walking around a little, we saw another similar cart a few blocks away, and then another one, and another one, and eventually, i think we counted at least ten or fifteen giant carts being pulled around town, all of them stuffed with dancing girls in bright kimonos, drummers, flute players, and the whistle blowers shouting and flailing around. the carts would stop in front of some important houses, and the dancers would perform for money or blessings, then move on to the next house. if two carts approached eachother on the same street, there would kind of be a little theatrical stand off for a while, and then the rope pullers would get under the carts and maneuver them around each other. there was a space in front of a park at the center of town where two of the carts geared up with some dancing and music and chanting, and then charged full force at eachother, crashing and breaking chunks of the carts off. in between some of the cart watching, we visited some old samurai houses. we couldn't walk in, but the sliding doors were all open and we could see the fire pit in the cooking room, all the tatami rooms, and wells behind the houses. we also ate some tororo soba at a noodle shop, and talked to an old guy with a giant beard who told us he lived in california, then became an art teacher in kyoto, and now lives in kakunodate making his living as a singer. he demonstrated by croaking "iiiiii can't stop laaaabiiing yooouu!" and laughed his head off. we had to leave early to catch the last train taking us to wada station, so we missed some of the best stuff that happens at night. i'm not exactly sure what they do, but i saw posters with the cart teams lifting the carts off the ground and crashing into eachother. every cart was followed by a smaller one carrying giant bottles of sake, so i'm sure everyone is out of their damn mind by the time the sun goes down. saturday was the first time i understood where i was, and that i wasn't just in some vague place away from everyone i know. this little post is so tiny and lame compared to what i saw and felt yesterday. it's so completely impossible to explain. i'll post some pictures and maybe that will help a little, but you won't be able to feel how overwhelming and beautiful the whole thing was. the whole town was filled with nonstop music and chanting and drums pounding. i'll look for some of the best pictures and post them next.