Man, I spent the past three days running around the prefecture and Kusu on foot, bike and car, so it's safe to officially diagnose myself with an acute case of Cranial Burnoutus. That goes for the muscles as well. Just giving you a quick lay of the land on this, Saturday's marathon started around 2:30PM when I reported for duty to Shinto purify the Mori yama then pull it around the hood until 5 when I had to jet home, hop in a cold shower and report for Tsukawaki Gion to watch, not to do, mercifully. The next day I was to report to the Mori yama storage shed at noon and haul it around again. Sunday was also the day of Tsukumi's big firework extravaganza, though, and a chance to visit Lisa, Ippei and meet up with some of Oita's more choice foreign agents so I couldn't possibly miss that. I left the pushing to the suckers...I mean participants...at 5, took another cold shower and catapulted myself across the prefecture for THREE GODDAMN HOURS!!! to reach Tsukumi with just the barest sliver of time left before the show began. Then, Monday, I had to get back to Kusu by noon after my night of abject debauchery to push the yama for--and this is the killer--eleven hours! ELEVEN! Not ten, the number after that one!
Between Saturday and Monday I must have only slept 8-9 hours...
But I wouldn't have missed the Tsukumi bash for the world and I'm completely convinced the sacrifice of body and mind was worth the trip. Not only were the fireworks unbelievable, but the after events were right up my alley. It's the square in me I suppose, but I'm not much for clubs and loud music, instead give me a swanky lounge with good drinks, POMO decor, comfy seats and fascinating conversation...or just give me the roof of Tomo's house/workshop at a fishing port, beer, shochu and I'll keep the fascinating conversation too. Max, you witty, wonderful goddess from the UK, I hardly knew ye and I'm going to miss our talk of SF and karaoke. You are, of course, always welcome at Casa de Matt, wherever in the world it may be located at any given moment.
But Gion...Oh. My. God. It nearly broke me in so many ways. In the previous post I elucidated on how it feels after just a few hours of pushing, but Sunday that was upped to five hours and then the whopper on Monday of eleven. Ramping up seems like a good idea, sure, right up to the point where you realize there's a dude at the top waiting to smash you with a hammer.
It was only perhaps 2PM in this shot so you're looking at Still Genki Matt here. Part of me wishes I could go back in time and tell me to hide in a rice paddy until the yama passes, then leg it for Tijuana.
The float moves pretty easily on flat ground once you get it moving, but it's the building momentum part that's the real bitch, not to mention all the subtle slopes, bridges and grates we had to push it over. And you have to stop and go a freakin' ton of times. Except for the challenges (I'll get to those in a bit) we rarely pushed the yama more than 50 meters before stopping at a residence or business that gave our accompanying monk a donation, rolling up the bamboo shades and having two of our dancers--all of them my students form various JHS--do a number. On one hand to you have to enjoy the lulls in work, but on the other you curse the generous bastard who just nixed all that hard work you did to get the thing moving in the first place.
So if the thing isn't getting stuck somewhere or the the drivers aren't asleep at the, uh, steering pole in front, then we're pushing it up a hill or desperately trying to hold back the tons of yama from rolling down a hill into some dude's rice paddy. Rarely was it easy going. Saturday and Sunday had enough participants where I could take a rest for a cycle of the stop and go grind, drink some ice mugi-cha (wheat tea--very delicious!) and find some shade, but Monday things were considerably more bleak. At noon there were exactly enough participants to push and steer so I had zero breaks. I don't think I had a break in pushing until about 3 or 4. Throughout the entire day I had a total of three such breaks.
You gotta admit the yama and its performers are a beautiful sight to behold.
Part of that became my own fault though. Through my sense of pride and the misguided notion that I'm supposed to be the representative of America--and boy haven't we done such wonderful things with the world in recent times!--around 5PM when there were enough participants so that I could concievably cycle out each round and rest I was the first to grab a plank, usually the mid-front, and push my brains out. My train of thought was something like "Damn it, I've been here since the start and you Johnny Come Latelys ain't taking my plank of wood! Don't you know I'm doing this for Uncle Sam?!" Twisted, no?
We sat down for a dinner of tea, rice balls, fried chicken and watermelon at 7PM and got ready for...dun dun dun!...the challenges. There are two challenges: fight the omikoshi and its crew to prevent them from pushing the yama back; and run up and down the street with the yama as fast as the crazy legs of your crew can go. The former is a ridiculous farce since the omikoshi crew have twice the members we do, so all we can do is lock our arms, legs and back and hope for the best. Invariably we always lost eventually, though sometimes it would take 30 excruciating seconds of battery acid pumping through your veins, muscles on the verge of tearing and ten Japanese hicks pushing on your back, shoulder, ass...wherever they can get a grip. Thinking about it in those terms I'm fairly certain Gion would go down very well in the Castro District.
The race challenge is arguably the single toughest and most frightening physical act I have ever committed to. Mori's main historical street is just one long cobblestoned path leading up to the entrance of the former castle and it's naturally the perfect place to run a several ton wooden construct at breakneck speeds with about a meter's clearance on both sides. Naturally. Push forward a hundred meters, pull back, push it another hundred, push it back... The entire time one is acutely aware, especially if you're in the Matt Slot, aka the mid-front , that if you misstep and fall not only are you going to get trampled by several guys behind you, but you'll take out enough runners so that the yama can't stop in time before maybe running into a baby carriage or causing a fishtail. This is not uncommon during the Hakata Gion where the years have claimed many lives. These runs went on for maybe an hour and a half up and down Mori's main strip and then on highway 387. Not that I was dry before this time, but after the challenges every inch of my clothing was soaked through with sweat enough to actually ring out like someone might ring water out of a dishrag.
You may notice the deeper shade of red on my happi overcoat there. Yeah, that's sweat soaked through three layers.
There was a drinking party at some dude's tire shop and I stayed for two beers and a bit of yakisoba just to be polite before discreetly saying 'bye' to the festival's main movers and shakers and fading away into the shadows to get my bike. Spent was I.
And it looks like I'll be doing it again next week for at least a few hours! Yes, all three Gion yama are going to meet in Tsukawaki next Saturday and challenge each other for supremacy! Rawr! Shoot me in the head, please.
Actually, don't get me wrong, as much as I hated the adversity brought about by oppressive sun, sweat-covered icky festival clothes and strained body I also loved all of that, and more. C'mon, this is what I came here to see and do. If we JETs aren't here for things like this why the hell are we in Japan!?
--Matt
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