Ariake Bazaar

Last Friday, I noticed a few tents were going up in the track area of the schoolyard, known as the ground in Japan.  I asked my principal about it and he tried his best to explain that there was some sort of festival going on that weekend, even providing me with a printout about it and talking with one of my JTEs to ensure I really understood what was happening. 

Most of the events, it would seem, were going to be held on Sunday, including a taiko performance and baumkuchen making.  I read a little closer on the rules of the baumkuchen and discovered that it required a team of three, so quickly dropped it.  Had I been told of this event a little in advance I may have been able to work something out and it still baffles me that my school doesn’t tell me about these kinds of things despite my constant willingness to participate.

Long story short, Amanda and I attended only for the last few hours on Sunday.  There were a number of things for sale, both on the ground and inside the community gym, but nothing that really caught our eye as a must buy.  Also inside the gym were an incredible amount of pictures of octopus drawn mostly by my students.  

This represents about 2% of all the pictures.

I had a fun time running around trying to find the students whose names I could recognize and smiling at their very different interpretations of the octopus.

There was a pin set up with a few wild boars in it, though it was more sad than entertaining to watch them as it was clear they weren’t treated well.  One of them had a pretty deep gash on its nose from where it had tried to get out of the enclosure, probably in an effort to get to the other two inoshishi held in a tiny cage off to one side.

Amanda mentioned she had heard that a lot of Japanese zoos treated their animals the same way.

The taiko performance was the one thing we both wanted to see, and it definitely delivered.  There were a number of school age children in the group that performed, but I only recognized one as mine, though a few of the others looked vaguely familiar.  My assumption is that they’re membership includes a bigger area of Amakusa than just Ariake.  They performed five or six songs total, with a break after their first four or so.  During the break, a few guys dressed as a dragon came out and ran around, performing all kinds of really cool looking actions and nearly biting people’s heads off.

You know, for luck!

For their last song, the performers went out into the audience and invited people to play their drums.  One of the girls came up to me and offered her drum, which I gladly took and joined in.  I tried to put the drum on my shoulder, but it had been adjusted for her small frame and I couldn’t manage it.  Undeterred, I held on the strap and played the taiko for the rest of their performance.  I may have looked ridiculous or like I didn’t know what I was doing, which to be fair I didn’t, but it was really cool.  

After the song, I gave the drum back to the student I recognized.  We spent a little more time looking at the octopus pictures before everyone started to pack up and we decided it was a good time to leave.  It was a short experience, but an overall good one.