Yamakasa Festival

On Friday 15th July it is the Yamakasa festival. This festival is one of the biggest in Kyushuu and dates back to 1241. It commenorates a time when disease was spreading and a priest called Shioichu Kokushi saved Hakata from a terrible plague by being carried around the city on a movable shrine and throwing water....Since that time an annual festival has developed. All around the city large foats are on display, they feature hakata dolls on one side and often have a more local theme on the other, I have seen baseball players at one and even anime at others.

These floats are too big to carry around the city ( they are about 10m tall), so teams of men carry a smaller one ton float (Smaller?!) around the city and temple while crowds of people, up to around a million, gather to watch and cheer them on. The teams are all competing to win the fastest time and spend a lot of time training. They are all dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and often take their children along with them. There is a lot of shouting as the teams cheer each other on in what is really an endurance test. Three men sit on top of the float to urge the others on, they are all chanting "Oissa! Oissa!" as they race through the streets.

Clothing: Shimekomi (underwear) and mizuhappi(a short coat)

The full festival starts on Friday morning at 4: 59 AM, I am not sure whether I will make it so I have been watching the training. They are really very impressive... and yes there are a lot of bare bottoms!

If you want to learn more about the festival try this link
http://kyushu.com/fukuoka/features/yamagasa_1/

Yatai... Hmmm... Yum!

One of the things Fukuoka is known for is its Yatai stalls. These are small mobile restaurants that are rolled out along the streets each night. They are a little like carts but you can pull up a seat and watch as the owners cooks you some noodles.

The specialty here is the ramen. Ramen is a noodle dish, with cooked noodles in a broth. Fukuoka Ramen is special because it is in a milky pork broth, I think the soup tastes a bit like boil up (so long as you haven't added watercress or puha! Yuck!), it comes with some meat and you add spring onions and a special garlic sauce. The trick seems to be in boiling the stock for hours and hours, so I am sure we could master it at home. They taste very good and I have met lots of people here who seem to be addicted. If you go into a Ramen restaurant you even get to choose how cooked you want your noodles. There are Ramen restaurants everywhere you go, but there is definitely something kind of fun about sitting in a Yatai sucking down your noodles. Of course here it is considered good manners to slurp them down... that way the cook knows you are enjoying them!

Hakata Dolls

Last night I went to paint claydolls. Fukuoka used be known as Hakata, and Hakata dolls are well known throughout Japan. They come in many different styles and can be realistic or characters. They are not only women but also men, with many dolls of warriors. The artists who make the dolls have great skill, sadly I did not! While I was there a man was talking to one of the artists about some work he had commissioned. The artist was making a doll of his father in his navy uniform, the doll stood about 30 cm high, sculpted from clay, and they were having a very serious conversation about the buttons on the dolls uniform... and getting the detail correct, can you imagine how small the buttons were?
I needed a bit more attention to detail myself, my poor little doll started out as a boy but ended up as a girl, there some very shaky lines but we all had a good time.

Pick my doll from the "real" thing!

Genuine Hakata Dolls

Tanabata

Today, the 7th day of the 7th month, is the Tanabata festival. This festival celebrates the meeting of the 2 stars, Vega and Altair, and is a time to write down your wish for the future, which, with good fortune will come true. To celebrate, you write your wish on a piece of paper and hang it from a bamboo branch. We did this at school today, making paper decorations for the branch so it looked attractive.

Many big shops have branches outside their doors so people can write down their wishes... it reminded me a little of Christmas, hanging wishes on Christmas decorations outside shops. I noticed on the way home that many house had branches outside their doors.

Some towns hold festivals and place large decorations around the city. I did not notice many in Fukuoka I think that may be as they are preparing for a very big local festival here next week.

Just like we have a special story about the stars for Matariki, there is also a special story about Tanabata. To read the story click on the link below...

Any one for tea?

Toady I went to a Tea Ceremony. Tea Ceremonys are very important rituals in Japan. There is nothing quite like it, that I know of, in our culture, it is a ritual for preparing special powered green tea for guests (matcha), and it takes years of practice to perfect this art.
We were welcomed into a traditional Japanese room with a tatami floor and shooji walls, as well as a special area called a Tokonama, for placing your sacred items such as scolls with caligraphy.
This is a traditional room for tea cermonys, there are even special places that you should sit.

Our host was dressed in traditional kimono and performed a short ceremony for us. A proper ceremony can go for up to 4 hours. It is very important that the person making the tea follows the correct procedure and moves in a precise way. To make the tea you add hot water to the green tea powder in your tea bowl, then you use a bamboo whisk to mix the tea until there are lots of bubbles and it look slightly thick.
The tea is slightly bitter so you are given something sweet to eat before you drink it. We had biscuits that contained a sweet bean paste. When you drink the tea you have to hold the bowl in a certain way, rotating the bowl before and after drinking, as this is all part of the ritual of the tea ceremony.

We also got to dress up for the event... I am not sure I had quite the right size or colour kimono (Although it did match my sunburn!) I am sure you can decide for yourself! Yikes! Not really my thing!

Mad about Manga

In Japan, people of all ages read manga or komikku コミック. (I'm sure you can work that one out!) They are cartoon story books tht are very popular here and now all over the world. They write Manga about all sorts of topics from action-adventure, romance, sports and games, comedy, in fact if you can write a story about it it can become a manga.  Manga characters become very popular and some series have 30 to 40 different books about the characters.  Many of the books then go on to become Anime (Animated movies... you can probably think of a few anime you have seen) Book shops in Japan are full of manga. I have never seen so many books, aisle after aisle of different comics.  Of course you have to remember when you read your book you start from the back and read from right to left which can be a bit confusing!

Fukuoka bookshop

 Everywhere I go at the moment I see posters advertising "One Piece" a very popular manga and anime.  I think there may be a movie about to be released... check out the Promo below and see if you like the look of this manga character!

Manga artists are very talented, their characters are very expressive and they can tell interesting stories using very few words.  The link below will tell you how to read manga, don't worry they have a very good english translation at the bottom of the page!