Tokyo time-lapse

Inter // States is the latest Tokyo time-lapse piece by photographer Samuel Cockedey. The soundtrack is "Paradigm Flux (Tokyo Cut)" by Woob, from the new "Paradigm Flux" EP.

Fullscreen this badboy.


inter // states from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

Time-lapse Gundam

Last weekend, some friends and I took a big road trip to Shizuoka, where this 1:1 scale Gundam was built, for a completely different reason than visiting the giant Gundam.  Why we didn't go check it out, I don't know, but I don't think I can ever forgive myself.

Wajima Taisai Festival!

*whoosh*

That's the sound of me blowing the dust off this blog.  Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives, and so is my time here in Japan.  As I rapidly approach one full year of being here, I look back on this blog and feel ashamed at how little I've put up on it.  The usual excuses come up, too much to document and too little time, as well as Facebook becoming more of a central place to post pictures and updates.  But I'm going to try to go at this thing with renewed vigor, which means going back over the last 12 months and trying to recap some of the more memorable things that have gone down here.  Starting with the very beginning....

I have had the following blog post sitting in my draft box since last August, about 75% complete.  It's about my town's big summer festival.  Since this festival is happening again this upcoming weekend, I figure it's probably time to call this one done and put it up.  So let's step in the old way back machine, to August 2009, and....

WAJIMA TAISAI!

For the past 4 days and nights, my quaint little fishing village (Wajima City, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan) was turned completely upside down as people poured in from all over to celebrate one of the biggest festivals on the Noto Peninsula.

Hot-Ishikawa.com describes it as thus:

10 meter tall festival lanterns called Kiriko as well as smaller portable paper lanterns are carried through the town streets along with portable shrines called 'omikoshi'. At the festival climax, a special bonfire by the sea is lit, and Gohei (decorative strips of white paper used in Shinto rituals) that fall from the top are scrambled for by brave men wearing loincloths. It is believed that the person who catches Gohei strips achieves success in everything he does. The giant Kiriko lanterns are indispensable to various festivals celebrated in Noto. Wajima's festival kirikos are especially distinctive because of their famous magnificent Wajima lacquer coatings.

The kiriko in this festival were similar to the ones in the Isaaki Hoto festival I posted about previously, but smaller.  Still plenty heavy though.

From Taisai Blog 2009

The Mikoshi - portable Shinto shrine, serves as a vehicle for the divine spirit during Japanese festivals.  Basically it's like the god's RV.



Opening Ceremony at sunset on Wajima Beach




Each night of the festival takes place in a different neighborhood in Wajima, and each night has a different feel, which is one of the things I enjoyed most about it. The first night was just a warmup, the second two nights were full on insane, and the last night got the kids involved with smaller kiriko for them to carry around as well as a dramatic street battle between a giant fish, the omikoshi shrine thingy mentioned above, and a crazy purple kiriko lantern that tilted in all directions and was festooned with discoballs, tinsel, and purple, yellow, and green strobe lights in a style that could only be described as 'Japanese mardi gras.' (All the other kiriko were pretty traditional wood and rice paper so this one really stood out.)


Kiriko lined up in front of a very serious fellow

On the two craziest nights (Saturday and Sunday), dozens of kiriko teams march their kiriko around the city, racing them at breakneck speeds across bridges and spinning them around insanely in the middle of street intersections.

Animated stereoviews of Old Japan

One of the coolest things I've seen in awhile, had to share this.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, enigmatic photographer T. Enami (1859-1929) captured a number of 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan. Check this blog for several more.

A stereoview consists of a pair of nearly identical images that appear three-dimensional when viewed through a stereoscope, because each eye sees a slightly different image. This illusion of depth can also be recreated with animated GIFs like the ones here, which were created from Flickr images posted by Okinawa Soba.

Buddhist ornament dealer

Meeting at the gate

Inari Shrine, in Kyoto

                                                                       Sumo wrestlers


Funny how some things have changed here over the years, and some haven't at all. In my countryside neck of the woods, a few of these photographs could've been taken last week. 

I got mail!

Today, I opened my mailbox, as I do every day just for kicks because I know I never have mail, and LO and BEHOLD, there was a small parcel! My kickass friend J sent me a most bodacious and gnarly gift, an Edward Gorey 2010 Postcard Calendar, with 26 detachable postcards!

So effing cool, and so unexpected, it totally made my day. Felt I had to put it on here.



Pics are backwards, don't have the time to fix it. The second one says "The Broken Spoke", and made me think of Austin. aww.

Thanks, dude!

Everybody else, if you'd like a hip but creepy postcard with art by Edward Gorey, send me your address.

Party Time in the Noto, Kiriko Style!

Quick post just to get this up, been an absolutely jam-packed month so far. It's festival season here in Ishikawa, especially up on the Noto Peninsula where I live. I found this out pretty quickly, as my first weekend here my co-worker Brian, a nice American chap who has been here for a year, took me and Katy, a fellow newbie from KC, MO, to the Issaki Hoto Festival in the nearby city of Nanao. And it was awesome.

This region is famous for the giant lanterns or "kiriko" used in most of the festivals. They are really beautiful decorative things made of rice paper and wood or sometimes (if it's a really nice, expensive one) lacquerware, and they are unique to this area in all of Japan. That's pretty cool! The big ones can...well, I'll let this Japanese tourist website do the work here:

The Issaki Hoto Matsuri is one of the biggest and most lively summer festivals of Noto where spirited men from the area around a fishing town called Ishizaki parade through the streets bearing Kiriko lanterns. One of the attractions of this Festival is the giant Kiriko lantern which is 15 m high and 3 m wide and weighs almost 2 tons. It takes 100 men to carry it and parade it through the streets. As the men shouldering these giants lanterns dance and parade through the narrow streets, the 6 giant Kiriko lanterns dance with them. As the skies get dark, these lanterns are lighted up and they create a fantasy like atmosphere. The Festivals continues till late night as the firecrackers light up the skies and as the climax nears the Kiriko look even grander as the competition among 6 giant Kiriko bearers becomes fiercer.

A fantasy like atmosphere indeed. I would say a 'rowdy good time' is more accurate. One thing that blurb doesn't mention is that there are about a dozen kids sitting on each of the kiriko, playing drums and flutes in their summer kimonos and looking cute as only Japanese kids can. There is also one older taiko drummer who keeps the beat with really impressive style. Here's a vid I cooked up on my shiny new Macbook Pro:





As the night goes on the guys carrying these massive towers consume more and more sake. This makes things very exciting. As the different kiriko teams charge back and forth and shake and rattle their lanterns in their attempts to outdo the other teams, you can't help but wonder as you cheer them on "Is that thing going to topple over and crush us to death?" (Apparently last year some poor old lady was in fact caught underneath one of the kirikos as it stampeded through the streets. As a result, this year there were police all over the place for crowd control, apparently a first in all the hundreds of years they've been doing this.)

Here are some pictures:



I have to get some sleep now, BIG day tomorrow. Today was the beginning of the biggest and best festival of them all, the 4 day long Wajima Taisai! (I live in Wajima.) There are JETs coming in from all over the prefecture for it, I'm gonna have at least 6 or 7 people sleeping on my tatami mat floor for the next couple nights.

Here's the real kicker though, and the reason I wanted to get this up now: earlier tonight, my coworker Brian managed to strike up a conversation with a girl whose father happens to own/manage/run a kiriko (no idea how this works...anyways, dude's got the hook-up). As a result...TOMORROW NIGHT...for SIX HOURS, I will be thrusting 2000 pounds of lacquerware around the streets of my little fishing village on my shoulders. :-O A few days ago, it was kinda nice being taller than everybody else. Now...notsomuch. Did I mention that alcohol, specifically rice wine, is a big part of this festival? They will be forcing it down my throat at every opportunity. Needless to say, I've made my peace with God. I'm pretty sure this will be the end of Adam in Asia, as well as Adam in general. Oh well, it's been a great run! Sayonara!

(expect more pictures and video if I survive)