Nihonmatsu Chouchin Matsuri

yet another weekend where i venture out on a friday night and somehow don't return home until Sunday afternoon. It seems to be a recurring theme.. as usual it involves some sort of karaoke, but this time also nomihoudai, a hip flask of whiskey, a wooden box of sake and a japanese skater who works refilling vending machines.

Friday nite started out being quite timid.. until we (not completely unintentionally) missed the last train. and found ourselves rampaging thru the streets of kori-town passing the time with whiskey swigs whilst trying to find something to do till the first train. I may have mentioned previously that my japanese speaking ability increases exponentially with alcohol.. so we reached the point where i started talking to strangers on the street and doing my stock standard junior high school jikoshoukai (self introduction). This eventually led us to meet these skaters , after i did a very messy/drunken ollie on one of their skateboards they led us to some bar (dooz?) where they said we should party. Inside wasn't really happening.. but i was pretty wasted by then anyway.. so it was at least a place to lie down =p

Many hours later.. one of the skaters, Mitsu. returned to the bar to have a chat.. as well as invite us to crash on the very hard wooden floor of his tiny apartment. which we did.. and as uncomfortable as it was, it was still a roof over our heads.

The next morning I gave up on returning home since i was about to head to Nihonmatsu anyway for Japan's 3rd biggest lantern festival, and Shirakawa is 40 mins in the wrong direction. Upon arrival i crashed out for a couple of hours in preparation for the hours of partying to follow.

The actual festival was pretty massive.. there were so many people there.. and like tons of food stalls and game stalls and toy stalls and such crowded with japanese people. It was mildly entertaining for a few hours.. until the lanterns arrived (well returned actually since they go from town up a mountain and back). These lanterns were actually giant floats with hundreds of lanterns attached and carrying a bunch of people inside with taiko drums as various other instruments. each float had a trail of people behind dancing and yelling "washoi! washoi!"

Alongside the road were festively dressed locals who would oft hand you a small wooden box.. full of sake.. which you had to promptly consume before handing the box back like 5m down the road. As you can imagine this leads to a very drunken Ian very quickly. Later on we met some japanese friends of one of the other JETs and one of those was a girl who used to work at one of the beer places.. and managed to get us even more free booze.. as well as some chips (or furaido poteto) as its called here. The rest of the night was a bit hazy.. but it did involve a kebab at some point. a rarity in Japan.

Im not really sure what i did the next day.. but i cant imagine it was anything more productive than returning home and sleeping for hours.

:: vocabulary words ::
Nihonmatsu = a town in Fukushima about an hour north of Shirakawa
jikoshoukai = self introduction
rampaging = what Fukushima JETs do after being coerced into drinking
kori-town = Koriyama, a nearby city where much partying happens
chouchin = lantern
matsuri = festival