Ishioka Festival

This past weekend was the Ishioka Festival, which is apparently quite a big deal for this town. People from the surrounding area know Ishioka because of this festival, and many come all 3 days of the long weekend. I was not aware of the scale of this thing until I came back from Tokyo on Saturday.

Saturday morning, I woke up around 7 in order to get on an early train and meet CJ on our way to Tokyo (more accurately, to a town near Tokyo), for Tokyo Game Show. While we had meant to get to the place a bit early, expecting to wait in line for a bit, we did not anticipate that the line would continue past opening time for an extra hour, as we walked around the entirety of the exhibition hall in a huge crowd, in the sun. It was rough. Once we were finally inside, we found the crowd even more unbearable, as we found ourselves unable to move in several instances.

TGS itself is a story for another time, though.

After we got our fill of the event, we headed into Tokyo for the first time ever on both our accounts. We went to Akihabara, which is also known as “Electronics Town,” as it has become the essential destination for anything involving technology or related interests. These interests range from comic books to girls dressed up as maids advertising porn shops and restaurants where the the waitresses are all costumed. Of course, such things are not on my agenda. It was pretty awesome, though, walking around the area, finding little stores here and there selling fun things. I’m going to have to go back at some point after I get my first paycheck... or maybe that’s the exact sort of place I should avoid.

Afterwards, I slowly made my way back to Ishioka, and finally returned around 8:00. After the long, hot day, I was pretty tired, so hearing drums as the train pulled into the station came as quite a surprise. I had expected to miss the festival in its entirety, not to catch it at its peak. And yet, one step out of the station and I was in a sea of people, more than I had ever seen before in the town, and in some cases, more than I had ever seen in one place in Japan, even the overcrowded TGS.

All I could do, though, was make my way through the crowds to my bike and manage my way home. Along the way, even at night, students of mine shouted out my name as I passed, excited to see that I had a life outside of school.

The next day, I met up with another English teacher from the area, having corresponded with him through my company’s coordinator. He had been in the town for 4 months already, and it showed as far as how well his kids knew him. I thought it was impressive that I was stopped once at night, but this guy was getting recognized absolutely everywhere. The day turned up rather uneventful, consisting mostly of patrolling the massive festival grounds, covering much of the downtown area. There were food and game stalls all along the streets, selling a wide variety of items. Some of the food was excellent, but a lot was terrible, and I ended up throwing out quite a bit, unable to continue eating some.

One annoying thing in Japan: somehow, there’s two kinds of “mustard,” here. One is named “mustard,” and is usually imported, while the other is called “karashi,” and is something I’ve only seen here. They are both yellow, but karashi is really damn spicy, and really just doesn’t taste that good. I got a hotdog on a stick at this festival, so of course I slathered it in ketchup, and of course I slathered it in the yellow goop right next to the ketchup. Hotdogs need ketchup and mustard, right? Well, as you might expect, it wasn’t mustard. The hotdog tasted decent on its own, but it was absolutely inedible after all that goop was on it. I was pretty bummed.

The next day, CJ visited the town for her first time, and enjoyed the last day of the festival with me. It was really more of the same, though I was now wiser as to food choice, only having to throw out one thing. I also started taking advantage of the draft beer stalls, finding it to be a rather more interesting way to enjoy the festival.

Lots of the students who came up to me were asking for money. That was really odd.

So this long three day weekend, pride of the people of Ishioka ended. The next day at school, everyone was sleeping at their desks trying to recover.