While our friends and family in Canada were enjoying Thanksgiving, Kris and I were taking part in the Japanese version of Thanksgiving. Every year, around the same time as Canadian Thanksgiving, Japan celebrates their good harvests with what has only translated to be me as “The Fall Festival.” It’s such an important festival that my fellow Nishiwaki ALTs and I were invited to attend by the Mayor. I know, it is a big deal.
But what made it a much bigger deal is that our friend, and fellow ALT, Kiram, was asked by the father of one of his students to take part in the festival by carrying one of the shrines.
Okay, let me try to explain this festival. All over Japan, there are hundreds of shrines. I don’t know too much about them, but in Nishiwaki it seems like each shrine serves a different purpose. Like you go to a specific one when you want to ask or give thanks for a certain thing. I know one near us is a car shrine, so people go there at new years to get their cars blessed, just to give you an example.
Anyways, during the fall festival, each shrine has a procession with their portable shrine, or, in Japanese, omikoshi. They range in size and extravagance. The shrine that Kiram was helping with was one of the larger ones. Not only was the shrine frickin huge, but there was also four children in there, constantly beating a drum and chanting. There were eight kids in our procession, so the four kids switched on and off, 
which was definitely necessary. Even when the shrine carriers stopped for a break of beer and dried fish, the kids kept chanting. Even when they were being switched, the kids inside kept chanting. By the end of the two day event the poor things had no voice left.
Kris and the other ALTs and I decided to follow along with the procession for the fun of it. Even though we were just walking around Nishiwaki for a good six hours, we had a lot of fun. We walked along a lot of side streets and just smaller streets that we never go down so we found a lot of new places and shops that we never would have found before. We had a lot of fun hanging out with our friends and meeting all the very nice and friendly people of Nishiwaki. So friendly that they shared their beer and dried fish with us. They even invited us to the celebration dinner on the second day. I felt extra honored cause I was the only female in the room at that dinner.
The actual festival part happened on the Sunday. After a long day of walking with the portable shrines, there were dances and exhibitions at a few of the shrines around town. We ended up at a large shrine surrounded by trees. It seemed like a very important shrine because the Mayor and some city hall people were there watching the events. Each procession did a “dance” with their shrine in front of the VIPs. This must have been the most difficult part of the festival. During the procession, our shrine was on wheels so the men never had to really pick it up. During the dance, however, they had to carry it on their shoulders, and then bounce it up and down and move around the center stage. All with the four kids still inside. Kiram and Minty (who had been asked to join mid-procession on Saturday) found this the most difficult cause they were the tallest and had to bend over pretty low in order to be at the same height as the other shrine carriers.
The actual festival part was pretty interesting, but the one we attended didn’t have as much going on as some of the others. At the festival, like any festival in Canada I’ve ever been too, there were a few different vendors hawking their wares. This included a candied fruit vendor (candy apples and more), a snow cone vendor, a few toy vendors, and a goldfish game. I don’t know if I can explain it just using words on a page, but let’s give it ago: the person playing (usually a small child) is given a wand with a large circle on one end with a piece of a paper like substance over the circle. The player than either uses the wand to pick up the fish, or to coax it into a plastic bag. I say either because I’m not really sure. If they are successful, hooray, you won a goldfish. I don’t want a goldfish, but I really wanna try the game. Anyone want a Japanese goldfish?
The other really cool thing that happened at the festival was the… umm… I’m gonna call it the treat toss. A bunch of VIP looking guys got up to the centre stage and were handed boxes filled with treats and rock hard moochi (lit
tle cakes made of rice flour). Once the crowd had gathered with their plastic bags in hand, the VIPs started to toss things into the crowd. They were really good at making sure they didn’t favor just one part of the crowd. They threw treats close, they threw them far, they just dropped them over the edge of the stage. It was chaos! But fun chaos. Not knowing about this tradition, we didn’t have a bag ready. Being the crazy person I am, I had to try anyways. Let me tell you something, the bags are necessary. Rock hard moochi flying at you, at whatever speed rock hard moochi can fly at, hurts! After all was said and done, I only ended up with one moochi. As Kris eyed the small children running around with bags full of moochi, he started to tease me because I was only able to catch the one. I think next year I’ll make him try. Or at least I’ll remember to bring a bag. So, the point to catching the moochi you ask? A few select moochi had numbers written on the bottom of them are if you caught a numbered moochi you won a prize. Yeah, my little loser moochi was numberless. Thinking it was useless, we left the moochi on the grounds somewhere. Later we were told that you can steam the moochi to make them edible. Meh, not that one moochi would have done us much good anyways.
The end of the festival was definitely one of the highlights. The portable shrine was brought back to it’s “garage” and greeted by a huge crowd. The shrine carriers had to do one more dance for the crowd, and, just when the guys thought it was all over, they had to run with it. I don’t know why, we couldn’t get a straight answer on that. All I know for sure was that by the end Kiram and Minty were praying for the end. The big highlight? During the last dance and chat some nice ladies were handing out little firecrackers to the women and children. One very excited lady explained to me in very fast and totally not-understood Japanese about when I was to set it off. I was able to understand how to set it off, and I figured out the timing from just watching the crowd.
The firecrackers were awesome! They made a loud popping noise and streamers came flying out of them. Loved it! The streamers went so high some of them got stuck on streetlights. A few of the older ladies wrappe
d some of the streamers around me like a boa. I quickly gave my streamers to some of the little girls, but it was a lot of fun.
Then there was the feast, or in Japanese, enkai. The people of Nishiwaki are so awesome because they are so excited to have foreigners in their town. They talk to us a lot, and when we can’t understand them they try their best to figure out some English or find a way to communicate with us. We ate and talked with people. Kris quickly learned out the Japanese drinking tradition: you don’t pour for yourself, someone else does, and they are eager to pour for you. We also played a betting game. Each table has someone selected to represent them to play tournament rock-paper-scissors. We got pretty close to the end, but our rep, Minty, was taken out by one of the kids.
All in all, it was a great event. I think what really made it so awesome was meeting all the different people in our town. It was really nice to be so welcomed into their world. It really made me happy, and grateful, to be placed in this town. I think I’m going to like it here.
Whenever my junior high school students have exams, I’m shipped off to one of my elementary schools to teach Grade 1-4. 
