The Star Festival: Tanabata Matsuri

The Tanabata bamboo at school

Japan loves its festivals. To be fair, there is a lot to love about festivals in Japan. It's interesting to see how the customs have evolved in different places at different paces. However, since this is the first real summer that I have spent in Japan, I am getting to enjoy some of the really wonderful summer festivals for the first time. Most recently, at the beginning of July, Hakodate celebrated the Japanese festival of Tanabata (the Star Festival), which is a little like Halloween. The whole thing is based off a legend that goes something like this.

Long ago there was a woman named Orihime who lived with her father, Tentei, near the Amano River. Orihime always wove very beautiful cloth, but she always busy. She never had time to meet anyone or fall in love. Seeing that his daughter was unhappy, her father arranged for Orihime to meet a young man named Hikoboshi, who raised cows on the other side of the Amano. The two met and instantly fell in love, and they were married not long after. However, after they were married, Orihime stopped weaving cloth, and Hikoboshi stopped tending to his cows, which became roaming all over the countryside. Tentei became angry and sent Hikoboshi back to the other side of the river, forbidding his daughter to ever see her husband again. Orihime pleaded with her father to let the pair meet, and Tentei finally allowed that the two could see one another once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month if both worked hard for the rest of the year. Yet, on the first year that they were supposed to meet, Orihime arrived at the river to find that the bridge had been washed away by the rain. She began to cry, and as she did so, her tears turned into magpies which lifted her up and carried her across the river to be with her love.

S-chan and M-san decorating

Okaa-san getting ready to
decorate

Tanabata snacks

Tanabata, which takes place in a lot of regions right around the same time as the major festival to honor deceased ancestors (which is called Obon), shares a number of traditions with other Japanese festivals, but It also has a few interesting aspects of its own. First is the custom of decorating a bamboo sprig with wishes for the coming year. I did this twice this year--once with the rest of the students at in my program, and again at home with my host family. The second of these traditions is for usually elementary school age kids, who walk around to the houses with bamboo sprigs outside the door. Ususally they are dressed up in traditional Japanese summer kimonos (called yukata). They knock on the door, and when someone answers, they sign a song so that the family will give them snacks.

The finished product

Naturally, this being a small town in rural Japan, once we started to get our first few visitors of the night, word got around pretty quickly that there were real live foreigners giving out Tanabata treats at our house. I don't know if we were the most popular house in Hakodate that night, but we were busy. S-san had to keep running up and down the stairs every few minutes to greet someone else, and usually it was to shrieks of "AAAH! GAIJIN! (FOREIGNERS!)" They were very, very excited.

こどもたちはわたしに「がいじん！」といいました。

Destination: Sapporo

Sapporo Classic

It's been a long week and an even longer weekend. One of Japan's many festival days, Tanabata, was celebrated in Hakodate last Tuesday, and so we spent most of that evening running around helping Okaa-san and M-san set up and get ready for all the kids that came trooping around in the bad weather. Then, after two days of speeches (in front of two classes and two teachers) and then an all day midterm-examination, we were finally given a nice long four day weekend. About two thirds of the students in the program decided to take that opportunity to embark on the four and a half hour journey to Sapporo, the capital city of the island of Hokkaido and the namesake of one of the well-known Japanese beers.

We left by bus in the morning on Friday and arrived at Sapporo at around 3pm that afternoon. After checking into the hotel, a group of friends and I set out on the 50 minute walk to the Sapporo Beer Garden, where they have a beer museum and a nice patio restaurant where you can eat Japanese style-barbecue. It was a really interesting exhibit, and, of course, the reward at the end was a draught of the Sapporo Classic beer, which you can only get in Hokkaido. Afterwards, we went back into the city and did some karaoke at a store near the Odori park, where they also incidentally were preparing for a large jazz festival that was going on most of the weekend. On our way home I stopped to talk to some of the people who were milling around and enjoying the scene, one of whom (slightly inebriated) asked where I was from, and when I told him Chicago, he got very excited and shouted "Chicago Bulls!" and then proceeded to do a pantomime of a matador bout with another (slightly inebriated) friend of his.

Astro Boy!!

Shiroi Koibito Gardens

The next day, we trooped out to the Shiroi Koibito (literally translated as "white lover") Factory, which is a local institution specializing in the making of chocolates and candies. The grounds of this place were pretty fantastic; it looked a lot like something you might expect to see at Disneyland, with a garden full of imported flowers and miniature houses that children were crawling all over. There was even one of those fantastic trains that takes you on a tour of the outside of the building. Inside, we were able to watch the candy makers rolling out hard candy and talked to them about how the candy was made. There was also some delicious soft cream (which yes, I did eat). For some reason, the Shiroi Koibito Factory also has a collection of miniatures and toys, so I went and got my picture taken with Astro Boy.

The candy makers; very friendly people

By the time we headed back on Sunday, it had been far too hot for far too long, and I think everyone was looking forward to sleeping on their own futon for a change. I think I slept for a good 2/3rds of the way back, but I did manage to wake up in time to use my new favorite vending machine in the world: the popcorn vending machine. For the low, low price of 200 yen (about $1.50) you can get a cup of either butter, salt, or caramel popcorn! Isn't this country wonderful?

My new favorite thing. 

We are back at school now, looking forward to a few weeks of speech contests and research presentations. I am still going to try to get a few more posts in before the program ends--we have some interesting culture classes coming up in which I intend on participating. Until then, stay cool everyone!

きんようびさっぽろにいきました。なかなかたのしかったです。

Port city squid

The view from the street in front of the school.

You might not know this, but I am tired. Turns out going to class for four hours every day and then spending up to seven hours doing homework every night starts to wear down on you after a while. Who knew? These past couple weeks have been full of adjustments--to life in Japan, to life in a small town, and to life in a language program. I won't lie and say that it has been easy, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the past week and am looking forward to another five weeks living in this beautiful place.

The view from my classroom

So for those of you who don't know, Hakodate is a port city, and in the past it was an important hub for the transfer of goods and people through Japan from both other Asian countries and especially Europe and the U.S. Unsurprisingly, given its geographic location, there is a strong Russian presence in Hakodate, and near the school where I attend classes there is a very prominent Russian Orthodox church that takes up a good chunk of the skyline. The local Russian consulate is also located in the same building as my school, so there is a nice combination of English, Japanese, and Russian signage on everything. That being said, I don't think I'm planning on taking up another language any time soon.

An ice cream shop on every corner

Looking up from the street in
front of the school

Squid ink ice cream

Usually after class, the our program arranges cultural activity classes that most of the students participate in. Being the graduate student (read: incredibly boring person) that I am, and as one of the students who has already done a study abroad program in Japan, I have chosen not to participate in a lot of these events. Instead, when class gets out, I usually set myself out on a walk around the mountain where the school is located. My homestay sibling, Sam, and I have already found all of the famous soft ice cream shops hidden behind the school. It's a neat little street that reminds me a little of Kyoto, since most of the shops cater to tourists and are definitely displaying the typical Japanese wares for sale. Hakodate's big draw for tourism is its maritime culture, which can be found everywhere from its famous food-stuffs like squid ink ice cream and fried stuffed squid to its manhole covers and city mascot. Don't roll your eyes at me, internet; the squid ink ice cream is actually pretty fantastic once you can get over the fact that it looks like your ice cream has gone bad and that it turns your tongue just a little black when you eat it. Naturally, since we are sitting on a coast, the seafood is pretty awesome as well. Usually our daily miso soup comes with some kind of fish or crab in it, and there is always plenty of sashimi (raw fish) to eat. I know there are plenty of people who say that eating raw fish sounds pretty gross, but personally, until you get to try it someplace like Hakodate, I don't think it really counts.

Tonight's dinner: sashimi bowl! 

 I'm going to try to be a little better about posting more regularly, but with our hectic class schedule, homework, my own research, and trying to spend as much time with my host family as possible, I don't want to make any promises. I'll also be going to Sapporo (Hokkaido's capital city) next weekend with a large number of the HIF program participants, so there should be something interesting to say about that if I can manage to write it down before I get too busy again. Of course, if I don't, I can always console myself with more squid ink ice cream. :p