Summer Festival 1

From late July right through to the end of August the towns and cities around are holding their traditional summer festivals. Last week I went to one in Kasukabe, a neighbouring city and this week it was the festival in Sugito, our home town.

They are the most fantastic affairs. Everybody comes along, at Kasukabe there must have been 100,000 people out on the streets.   I counted over 200 food stalls alone.


What is so good is that everyone joins in and they all have such a rollicking good time. There are dancing grannies, kids and adults in beautiful summer kimonos, drumming, bands and of course Mikoshi.









Mikoshi are ther tradional mini=shrines that are carried through the streets on the shoulders of different teams, they compete with one another and parade up and down for hours.

 They usally start at about 5.00pm and run around non-stop for four hours. It must be incredibly tiring as it is also incredibly hot, about 36 C and very humid at both festivals.

Village Performance

I've been playing keyboards in and out of the local village band for the last two years. This time it was time to take a deep breath and perform in public at the monthly concert in front of the bakery.







I've recently taken up my bad habit of playing the banjo after a friend in Tasmania nade me a most marvellous instrument from beautiful timbers. Not exactly a banjo it's a Banjulele, smaller than the real thing and all wood without a skin. The sound is sublime, like a sweet little guitar.

Once in Japan I wanted to get a full size five string to play as well. So went to a place called Ochanomizu in Tokyo where there must be more guitars and guitar shops in one place than anywhere else in the world. I found a perfectly good Chinese made, of course, banjo for around $200. The equivalent instrument made elsewhere would be around 5 times the price.






So with a group of local friends we started rehearsing once a week for about a month. The rehearsals were as much fun as the performance with a hilarity filled picnic supper held each time when we had finished.

The day of the concert itself was bloody hot and windy, hence the lack of formal attire.

My wife says I have to stop looking so grumpy when I play. Its not grumpiness, just concentration. At least I didn't stick my tongue out of the corner of my mouth. Or maybe I did and no-one has been brave enough to show me the photos.

Sawara, mini-old Edo

Sawara is an historic town near Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture. It is known as the mini-Edo (old name for Tokyo) as it has a lovely historic quarter wuth many old buildings.

It was built around a canal system leading to the sea and, as in Europe, canals used to be the most reliable and safest means of transport.






In some ways it was one of gateways to old Edo and had inns, like this one,  and facilities for visitors preparing to enter the big city.







There are many "kura" which are the old reinforced storehouses where valuables were kept. They have extrememly heavy iron doors, few entrances and usally outward sloping walls. This make climbing the walls, and access through the roof more difficult.

We have been there several times and it is always very quiet. Not jammed with tourists as many historic spots often are.

Walking around you really are transported back to old Japan.

Another good thing about the place is that it isn't just a tourist town, people live and work in amongst the old buildings.

 One of our favourite places is a shop that makes and sells bamboo and wooden tools and household and traditional goods.

It has a street front shop but also a "kura" full of  good things and lovely internal gardens.

 One of the things they specialise in are bamboo implements for the tea ceremony.






We bought this whisk and water ladle from there. Really incredible hand made craftmanship.

Rice

In early May many of our neighbours got busy planting rice. Now, a few months later, we are living amongst a carpet of lush green.

 Quite a lot of the planting is still done by hand. Indeed a common sight in rural Japan are little old ladies now bent double after years of bending over in the fields.
Mostly now though the planting is done using the rather marvellous machine on the right.

Rice is, of course, a fundemental part of Japanese culture and is held in great reverence. Japan still produces nearly all of its own rice and vigourously resists attempts by other countries to force imports.

I'm quite sympathetic with this view.
Starvation has been known in living memory and the sight of so many rice fields everywhere gives a comforting sense of security. Also much of the rice growing is fairly, if not very, small scale. This provides work and a meaningful existence to people in rural communities, many of whose families have been growing rice in the same spot for hundreds of years. To allow massive imports from foreign big agribusiness would harm these communities irretrievably.

There are many different varieties of rice grown in Japan, the ones used for sake making are completely different, just like wine grapes.

There is nothing like the new season rice properly cooked. It is is aromatic and has a texture like little pearls or salmon eggs, slightly firm on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside.



We buy our rice at he local farmers market from the lovely ladies on the above. The rice is all locally grown, literally from our village and surrounds.

 We get a blend of 50% "Mr Suzuki" and 50% "Snow Queen."



You then select how much you want it polished. We get ours to about 80% polish which gives a lovely texture and flavour.
The different levels of polish are displayed below.

Hydrangea Temple

Over the years we've been to many flower festivals and viewings in Japan. The japanese love flowers and their poetic seasonality. We've been to cherry blossom viewings, irises, roses, whisteria, poppy and most recently a hydrangea festival. The cherry blossom time is the most famous, and the Japanese are quite crazy about it. The evening news shows where the blossom front is moving from South to North, people go out in droves and and picnic and drink with friends and family under the blooms.

We are rarely in Japan this late in the summer so we headed off to a local little temple in amongst the rice fields to see their famous hydrangeas.

The Isoyama Shrine in Tochigi Prefecture is a typical local little village shrine, apart from the thousnads of hydrangeas.

 It's all a very jolly and peaceful affair with small groups of locals chatting and taking pictures and an old farming woman selling drinks and grilled octopus dumplings.

Then up into the nearby mountains for a drive and a lunch at a little local restaurant.