Eating, Singing, Festivale

Posted by Emily

I guess it's about time for another update. I've been slacking a little. I'm getting a little tired of blogging about everything that I have been up to but I know it's could for people who want to know what I'm doing and it will be good to look at later. So I'll power through. I have surprisingly little time left on this trip (I got back to MN on July 23).

The day after we wandered around Murakami, Ellen had the day off from work because of the large festival that was taking place in her town. We headed over to it during the middle of the day for lunch, walked around a bit and had some Japanese festival food (nothing too interesting during the first trip...some fried chicken balls, fruit flavored slush stuff and some crappy crepe-wannabe thing). There were booths set up on several blocked off streets, some with games, some selling things and some with foods. Overall, it didn't look too out of the ordinary. I think that my favorite item of sale was the inflatable "bottles" that little girls wore as on their backs. Imagine a large replica of a pop bottle, but inflatable and strapped to the back on a little Japanese girl. Very strange and very amusing. I don't really understand the appeal.

Not much was going on during the afternoon we basically lounged around for the day and then went back to the festival in the evening. We had dinner there, this time much more interesting than lunch. We started with octopus balls, random items mixed together with mini octopi, covered with a batter and cooked in circular molds, making a ball. A brown sauce is put over the top and they are eaten with a skewer stick. I was pretty excited to try them but didn't end up liking them all that much. Next it was on to okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake type deal that involved more random ingredients all jumbled together and cooked. What was in ours? Ummm....lettuce, egg, corn, bacon-type meat, fish flakes, more brown sauce. Probably more things that I couldn't identify. Again, I had higher hopes. It pretty much all took on this strange fishy taste. I like fish was this was the negative fishy taste that many people hate about "fishier" tasting fish. Does that make any sense?

After eating, we went to look at the shrines of all of the in Murakami. Each neighborhood had a 2 story shrine on wheels, many of which are over 200 years old (I think?). They are pulled through the streets by men holding long ropes attached to the shrine, sometimes straight and sometimes back and forth across the road. They are lit by paper lanterns hanging from both levels. Children sit in the bottom level playing instruments. I think drunk men sit in the top (there's lots of sake drinking going on).

After having our fill of the shrines, we gathered together a group of Ellen's friends who are also English teachers, and went to do karaoke. Japanese karaoke is not like American karaoke where you to a bar and sing in front of all the people in the establishment. Here, a party room is rented for a group of people for a certain amount of time. I think we may have had about 12 people. It's nicer than just being in a bar because you have full control of the songs and don't have to deal with the embarrassment of singing in front of people that you don't know. It also allows you to sing and dance on the chairs. That's probably not encouraged but we did it. It was a very good time.