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)