Another Festival

Well, on Monday night we went to another festival. This one was in a town called Kotohira at a shrine called Konpirasan that we have been to before. It is the shrine with all the stairs, 1368 stairs to be exact, that we climbed all the way to the top before. However, this time it was the God that was coming down and we were not allowed up the stairs and so we were at the street below and there was this really big parade. Well, maybe it wasn't all that big. It was the slowest moving parade that I have ever seen! And because it was so slow it seems soooooo long. Really it was long, but it seemed ten times longer than it was. The parade started at nine o'clock and it finished just before midnight. It was similar to the chosa festival in that each town was able to have a group of their dances to represent them in the parade. It was cool to look at all of the different ways they dresses, but after about the forth SLOW moving town it got old. What each town did is most of had a man who was twirling this stick about 3 feet long all over the place. He was twirling it on his back, around his head, with an open palm, and any other interesting way that he could. That was cool to watch, like I said for the first three or four times. Then in after that guy they would have four guys carrying two huge wood boxes that were filled with something really heacvy on a six foot wood pole. They would carry these and then shake them so they would rattle and make noise. Robert got the chance to try and shake it to make noise and was able to go so a little bit. Some of the towns had a couple of guys that were carrying poles that were at least thirty feet in length and they would swing them from at their waste and come just close enough to your head to scare you and swing them away. It was really cool and amazing how much control they had over these things. After these guys, then came about eight to ten other men who would throw these enormously long poles with something on the end to each other and catch them. Out of about 100 total people throwing I never saw on fall. There were several that might have gotten close, but never did fall. These poles were probably twenty to twenty-five feet long. The poles varied in length a little bit with each town and the weight thing on the top was a different design on each towns poles. After all of the towns there was a couple young girls who were being carried and young boys riding horses. I asked the Japanese lady we went with, Chitomi, and she that they parents just pay for their children to ride in those and there was nothing to special about them. Funny though when I asked her she did not know and had to ask around herself. (Just as a little side note, the people here don't know much about the temples and shrines around here. It seems that only a few people and the monks know even what they are for and which shrine has which God in them. It is a little weird, I think, but it just seems that their religion is not practice so much anymore and so they don't learn it really ever unless the seek it themselves.) After the rich childern there was a long line of priests and monks and I think just other people who were involved with the shrine. There was a group who were playing bamboo instruments kind of like flutes and other variations of wind instruments. That was really cool to see and hear! Then finally came the shrine or God. Everyone told us that it was the God that they were bringing down, but when it came by it looked more like a shrine. It was PURE gold. I don't even remember another color being on there. Many monks were carrying it. It looked like there were more people carrying it then the chosas and I know that it was a LOT smaller and lighter. It was cool to see. We asked why there preformed that way in the parade and they said that it had been that way for centuries. This was a really old tradition and people seem to all know about the event, but not anything behind why they do it and what it is all about. I bet if I could talk to the monks they would know but not the average person on the streets. It was another great experience that allowed us to see old Japan and yet see the culture that they have now. It was fun!