Jap Blog 27th of July 1996

Up at 9:00 am and had a reasonable-sized breakfast. Yuko, Wayne and I travelled into the city a bit to get the Zaurus fixed. Cost Wayne 12300 Yen and only took 20 mins. Had a Japanese BBQ for lunch. It included liver and beef among others. Went to a department store and bought some undies because Yuko’s mum was threatening to throw some of mine out. [author's note - festival celebrations going on everywhere] Yuko’s mum was going to pay for the new undies too. These people are just too nice. Yuko gave me a bell as a present. Before we got to the department store a girl stopped us and wanted to talk English with us. In the department store I heard “My friendo!” We had bumped into her again.

After our shopping Yuko took us to her uncle’s house. They had some clothes ready for us to join a festival. We carried an omikoshi, small temple on wooden beams that you place on your shoulder with a fox god in the middle, around the neighbourhood. Quite a few poses with the local children and the omikoshi before carrying this out. Some of the other neighbourhoods would have thought that it was disrespectful for a foreigner to carry so we had to do it where people knew who we were. Sat down for some tea in a large building. I had to introduce myself and chug a beer in front of the whole crowd. So, I don’t normally drink beer, abstention is the word for it, but I felt that the peer pressure was just a little bit too great not to. We had Japanese curry for tea and it was lovely and mild. We then pulled a musician's float into the town centre. Two hours of firecrackers, dance, people, acrobatics, drinking and people generally enjoying themselves. A Danish woman came and spoke to us and we had to give her a kiss. Dragged the float back and had another meal! Then we went back to Yuko’s uncle’s house. What a crazy day. The town was near Fusa Station. Lots of makeup too!

- posted by Hammy @ 8:28 am