The Big-Stupid-Festival aka Onbashira Strikes Back!

H went to a volunteer fireman meeting last night (the members are all the same people doing Onbashira) and came home with no hair. Or very little of it anyway. In preparation and in honor of 'Tate Onbashira' (the Raising of the Sacred Pillars), they all got their heads buzzed. And H, being a one-for-all kind of guy, let himself be subject to the mass craziness. I think my level of dis-like for all that this festival has made him do has gone from strong to hate. It just makes me want to rant about the whole flockishness of the Japanese... but I won't. Grrrr.

So, today... H got up at 5:30, ate one of the rice balls I prepared for him the night before (turns out I didn't use enough mayo with the tuna and so it was not flavorful enough... we added black sesame and salt to fix that) and left about 6:20 to catch the bus leaving for the shrine area.

I had breakfast with him (mmm...raisin bread) and saw him off before going back to bed and sleeping until about 11. I had a snack and got myself ready to go with my mother-in-law and company (minus my father-in-law, who went a little earlier with his friends to help pull the log) to enjoy the shrine and festivities before the logs got there. We put on our happi (festival jackets; yes, pronounced like 'happy'). Don't we look cool? There's a front picture too... but not on my camera... I'll try to post it later. The happi I wore is specific to my area, Kogawa; everyone else was just wearing the general Suwa happi.

Parking is usually the biggest problem when going to festivals, and luckily H's cousin lives near the shrine and invited us to park at their house. We only had a five minute walk to the shrine where we got Omikuji (fortunes) and watched a little Taiko (traditional drumming). My fortune was 'Pretty Good' and foretold a safe pregnancy, so I kept it to put with the baby stuff.

My niece, M, was very excited about the Taiko, so that's her smiling... it was a little sunny.Here's my mother-in-law standing in front of the hole for the biggest log.

Even though the logs hadn't arrived at the shrine, some of the streets were already packed with people. There was some dancing, but we couldn't get close enough to see it. By then I was starving and we went and bought tako-yaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takoyaki, Osaka-yaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki, yaki-tori http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitori, dango http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dango and churros http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churros from the stalls for lunch.

We sat down and ate at the Kogawa Rest area. Each area sets up their own rest areas along the Onbashira road for people from that area to gather and eat and drink and be merry. There were only a few other people there, so it was nice and relaxing. My father-in-law had by then become very drunk and was ready to go home, so he joined us in visiting H's cousin's house before we went home for the day (and yes, he's going back tomorrow).

I didn't see H until about 9:30 that night; he was exhausted and drunk and went to sleep almost immediately after he took a shower and told me that he needed more rice balls for tomorrow. So, I was a good wife and made rice balls and washed his stinky socks for tomorrow. Only two more days of this... until September...ahhhh...