The festival is to celebrate the harvest of the year. Yoshiura is near the sea, which gives the word "kani" to the festival. It means "crab" in Japanese, and is one of the things they harvested from the sea. One of the mikoshi that were carried was in the shape of a boat, while a few others had crabs as decoration. It was really quite something. Each ward of the city is responsible for its own mikoshi, and each mikoshi is paraded through the town. It gets carried up the steps to the shrine, where they parade it around there. That part was very exciting, because one of the mikoshi was spun round and around, changing mid way in rotation. Another was rocked back and forth. That one was really scary, because there were four kids hitting the taiko on the inside. To be quite honest, I'm not sure how they stayed in without falling out. The guys holding the mikoshi were jumping up and down on the handles, it was rocking so much. The ship shaped mikoshi was also really interesting. They would charge the shrine, bringing as much of it into the shrine as they could. The energy of the matsuri was just so exciting!
After watching the mikoshi part, the girls I was with decided to walk around the shops in the streets. I love Japanese festivals for this reason. In the little alleyways, they open up various kinds of shops. Many were for kids, in that they had toys and other kinds of prizes available. A few were by chance: you paid your 300￥ and got to pick a small cardboard thing. If you pick up the right number, you get a prize. Others were games, where you had to fill up a bucket thing with balls out of water. That's how I won my tarepanda. And of course, there were food stalls! I loved the karaage, which is basically fried pieces of chicken. I also enjoyed some fruits that were covered in hard candy syrup. But I think my favorite stall was a yakitori stall. The old man running it started a conversation with me. But it was really hard, because I didnt fully understand what he was asking me and everything. He asked me what my father did, but I couldnt answer him fully because I didnt know how to say that he's an engineer for the federal government (of the US). He also asked me if I had a girlfriend because I was with three girls. Even though all of that, I really enjoyed him. His yakitori was so good. I got a picture with him, to remember him.
During the course of the day, there were two cases of my identity being mistaken that I will probably always remember. The first was really actually kinda nice, but the second was not so nice. When all of the HUSA students first got to the matsuri, there was like a mass of white people (the Koreans and Chinese blended in a bit). A nice little obachan pulled me to the side and asked me basically, what are all these white people doing here? I explained that they were foreign exchange students studying at Hirodai and all of that. She told me something about her daughter or something studying at Tokyo University and stuff like that. And then she asked me, 「あの外人たちの通訳ですか。」 That is, "Are you their interpreter?" I had to laugh. I explained that no, I was actually a foreign exchange student myself, and that I was studying Japanese. She seemed a bit surprised, but thanked me for coming to visit their matsuri. She was such a sweetie. On the other hand, there was the woman who was running a toy stall. I didnt really hear, but the girls I was with did. They said that the woman was talking with a bunch of kids that were hanging around, and telling them to talk to the girls. They were apparently very afraid. But to me, she said that I was probably a Chinese! When I heard that, I got really upset. I really wanted to go back and correct her or something. I realise that I dont look 日本人, but really? Am I so different that it is impossible for me to look 日本人?! I ended up just yelling and looking really upset, which perhaps was better than making a scene. idk, I guess I should just file it somewhere under learning about other people's perceptions of me. It just took me by surprise, I guess. I thought I looked Japanese, and I thought that Japanese people would at least recoginize that maybe I'm not one of them, but I'm certainly not like the other Asians around.
Anyways, all in all, it was a fun and memorable trip. While I did not like getting drizzled on, slightly muddied, and mistaken for a Chinese, I had lots of good food to eat, and saw a most wonderful sight. The 吉浦かに祭り was a success!
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