Brendan in Japan: Daizenji Fire festival (PG)

Monday, January 08, 2007

Daizenji Fire festival (PG)

This blog is rated parental guidance: images are included that may be shocking to some viewers.

Men are cold...

... so they get fire...

...big fire...

This festival has a history of 1,900 years. The idea is simple: get drunk and burn stuff.

Great picture Heather (click to enlarge). Can you see the man sitting on top of one of the cannons?

They light huge cylindrical bundles of pine-wood and then they carry them around. Its great.

Dave and Oliver are participating.

Guess who?

Thus the PG rating. Bums, bums, everywhere bums.

I just love the way Japan do festivals and tradition. I mean they're just cool! Look: fire, drink, shouting, naked bums. Compare this to ... oh I don't know - Carol Singing, a kind of English winter tradition. Now while I like carol singing, and all, if it was done naked whilst carrying huge burning bundles of pine, with buckets of mulled-wine (rather than the odd glass) it would be a lot more exciting (well maybe not naked). This is why England has football riots and sports-team curries full of carnage, we have no other space for going crazy and acting like pagans.

Read Ollie's account here.

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The story

I arrived here in Japan in 2005 on a scholarship. I was gleefully ignorant about the country, ill-prepared and basically only came because I wouldn't have to pay a thing and well... it seemed cool.

At first I hated much of it: the food, the accommodation, and the prospect of being blown away by an approaching Typhoon. But now, two years later, I love it.

I have spent my time learning Japanese (fascinating in numerous ways), frivilled away too much time in the time-warp capsules of Japanese style internet cafes, camped it up with some barbershop, and been to lots of festivals - some beautiful, some with lots of fire, and some with lots of fire where I got drunk and joined in.

There's been the odd bit of travelling around Asia too, with trips to China, the Bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand, Korea and the homeless snows of Northern Japan.

During my time I've had some surprises: professors that find it de rigeur to start a scholarship with an organized boozing session; a nation of women that are enchanted by the western male; or a the cultural-muddle that is a Japanese Christmas. (Especially hearing about how - in a particularly inspired feat of confusion - a department store once presented a Chrismas scene with Santa nailed to a cross.)

I 've also been baffled by the odd gadget, impressed by the odd bit of Japanese design (confused by others) and been delighted by the warped incorporation of English into Japanese.

Started as a "day job" my teaching position at a local primary school has turned into my daily pleasure. Though part of the Tsuzuki Gakuen (a kind of Microsoft of Japanese education), which means even regular school events like Sports Day are a bit odd, children are simply the most fascinating and amusing category of human being alive. (See above.)

Two years since arriving, I now enjoy reflecting in words or pictures more generally on Japan: Everything from Japan's sex industry, its unique approach to religion, to its vending-machine fetish.

In April 2008, I finished teaching and moved to Tokyo, where I am currently interning for a Japanese MP, deep in the heart of the Japanese political system. Which is another way of saying I clean cups and answer the phone.

All Over

Monday, January 08, 2007

Daizenji Fire festival (PG)

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