I’m playing a little catch-up. My last few emails have been about recent news, but there’s a whole slew of interesting things that happened to me before Christmas last year that I want to tell you about. I’ll try to keep things short and sweet, though, so you don’t doze off in the middle.

 

Let’s see… I told you about Sports Day at the Budokan, and about the break-up with Seiji. Those two events actually happened on the same day, concurrent with the Canadian Thanksgiving. So, while most of you were preparing to sit down and eat some turkey, I was whacking people over the head, shooting arrows through walls (well, only once), and dropping bad news on my soon-to-be ex. Good times, good times…

 

Despite the break-up, Seiji and I still spent a lot of time together, although it was mostly with groups of people. I went to a Blues Night concert at Kaya, and a Nihonglish, and Heather Dixon’s birthday party (with karaoke!). And on October 21, we went to Do-Gyo-Retsu, the autumn drum festival in Matsue. I asked Taeko along for backup. It was a gorgeous October day, warm and bright, but with a touch of chill air hinting at the coming winter. For over a month, on evenings and weekends, all the old towns in Matsue practiced their unique patterns of drumming, and the air thrummed with drumbeats and shivered with the shrill whistle of the pipers. At home, with my window still open late into fall, I listened to the muted pounding from across the river and further west. I had thought of joining a town and participating in the festival, but my schedule at AEON doesn’t allow it. Seiji is used to the festival, so he was quite blasé about it all, and Taeko’s not really into old things, but I was thrilled and expectant. We stopped first at Port Below for coffee, then wandered down Tenjin-machi towards the bridge to the castle. We paused before the bridge to have macha tea – very bitter – with traditional sweets made from rice flour and bean paste. There was a temporary shrine with a small Buddha and burning incense by the water, near the marker commemorating the man who was supposedly sacrificed hundreds of years ago to prevent the bridge from falling down. There is also a famous, long, smooth rock that is apparently here because it doesn’t like to be moved.

 

When we crossed the bridge, we could hear the drums near the castle and headed that way, over the canal and past the Karakoro Art Studio. At the corner, we waited and saw one of the first drum processions. Seiji said this town was Omachi. They were wearing costumes. Most of them were wearing patterned gray tunics with, presumably, the name of their town printed on them. The musicians also wore old-fashioned, close-fitting leggings and split-toed socks with sandals. The women wore braided headdresses in bright colors and the older men wore white towels or cloths on their heads. Some of the male drummers bared one arm and half their torso, which on the younger men was quite a pleasant sight. The procession, which set the pattern for most of the others, was like this:

 

First, a standard-bearer walked, carrying the long, narrow flag with the town’s insignia on it. After this came the drum cart, pulled by children. Yes, children, dozens of them, basically yolked in and cajoled by their parents to pull harder. Talk about child labour. The drum cart itself was a large, wheeled wooden structure with an ornamental roof, designed like the roof of a shrine and decorated with more banners. It held two large, flat drums, and three or four drummers on either played it while walking. Around them whirled pipers, cymbalists and other members of the town. Behind the drum cart, pulled by one or two people, was the all-important sake cart, draped in brightly coloured red-and-white striped fabric and festooned with green bamboo branches. The whole procession created quite a clamour.

 

We watched some others go by. One of them, as an added touch, had a wheeled boat behind the drum cart, with seven children depicting the seven lucky gods famous from old legends. The ‘sail’ of the boat was made from white paper lanterns. I was looking for Cleve’s team, Tohoncho, but I didn’t see them at the time. Seiji said Tohoncho was famous for being the rowdiest, hardest-drinking team.

 

While we were watching, I saw Regina, one of the NOVA teachers I met in the summer. She told us she had quit her job the day before. And no wonder. She hadn’t been paid in over two months, and NOVA had basically held the teachers hostage by telling them that anyone who quit got put at the bottom of the list for getting paid. (About two weeks later, NOVA went down in flames, declaring bankruptcy and closing all of its schools). NOVA got itself into this situation because it used to make students sign a five-year contract to study English. The government stepped in last summer and said they could only have one-year contracts (which is what AEON has) – and they had to pay back all of the students. So Regina and all of her fellow teachers were out of a job. She decided to stick around, and teach dance classes for a while until something better came up. One of her students gave her a home for a while, since landlords started ejecting teachers from their apartments when NOVA didn’t pay the rent. I’m feeling pretty lucky with my choice of AEON these days.

 

The drums circled the block in front of the castle a couple of times. In the castle parking lot, where they were waiting to do their next turn, the drummers showed off a little, pounding out the beat and getting faster and faster. There was a strong community feeling, and a certain wildness in the air.

 

We took a break to go to the castle grounds, where the Dai-Cha-Kai (literally “Big Tea Party”, was in process. Large tents were set up in the park under the castle walls, each featuring different schools or styles of the tea ceremony. We opted not to wait in line, and wandered past the flower-arranging and Japanese garden displays, the kimono-clad koto players strumming their instruments and evoking an older Japan, and the vendors selling pottery and food. I bought some beautiful pieces of pottery from a very persuasive, very charming potter. It was lovely. And I got one of the coveted drum festival posters from the Information Centre in the park. The poster is a print of an intricate paper cut-out by a local artist I have met. It is really beautiful.

 

The drum festival was winding down when we left the park, and the drum carts were beginning to wend their separate ways to their home towns. We hurried to Matsue Bridge in time to see three carts crossing it. One was Tohonsho, with Cleve clashing his cymbals, posing for pictures and jollying the kids along. Jennifer and Yumi were there too, enjoying the day and giggling at Cleve. Everyone was beginning to get tired, but the sake cart, at least, was lighter. Tohonsho had the biggest sake cart! It was at least twice as big as the others!

 

There was also a woman, an older woman in a brightly coloured costume, a tamasudare. She was wearing a vivid floral smock and leggings, all oranges, pinks and blues and over that she wore a blue-gray tunic. She carried a large red fan in her right hand, and a long, multi-coloured spray of paper or light wood, and she was dancing to the music and graciously accepting the applause of the people around her. I still don’t know what significance she had, but she was very entertaining to watch.