Sep
14
Danjirimatsuri
Filed Under Newspost
Since I didn’t get any vaccinations against Japanese encephalitis I find it exciting looking at all the mosquito bites I get and thinking that potentially any one of them could be lethal.
Reiterated inspiration
I have a bad dilemma that has to do with writing new entries. Usually, the only time I can come up with anything worded like I would want to express it is when I am on the move and totally unable to write my thoughts down. By the time I get to the computer I have already forgotten all of what I had wanted to say, or how I had wanted to say it, and have to write some sad excuse for a post about the same topic. Luckily, I can get some contentment just from the fact that had I had a pen and paper when inspiration first struck I could be the king of the world.
Burning down the house
Visa eventually went through with his plan of getting an off-campus apartment and decided to hold a housewarming party Saturday evening. He had invited many international students out of whom nobody came because they were too busy partying elsewhere, so after our few Japanese friends left far too early, Henrik and I stayed at Visa’s place drinking vodka and beer and listening to Finnish reggae (ugh) and Ronald Jenkees until 1 am.
Meeting the home visit family
As opposed to Saturday which I wasted sleeping late in the afternoon, Sunday was probably the most interesting day until now culture-wise. I had to wake up at 8, a rare occurrence during weekends, in order to get to switch trains four times to be in time at the Danjiri festival organized in the district where my home visit family resides (Kishiwada). The festival itself was a huge event considering that it wasn’t organized even close to downtown but in a pretty quiet residential area somewhere between Osaka and the airport. The turnout was surprising as streets were filled with locals watching the moving parade which consisted mostly of people dressed in traditional clothing and pulling Danjiri carts more often than not at a dangerous speed. That was about as much as I understood about the 300-year-old festival, so enjoy these photos.
1
2
3
4
5
The more awkward part of the day had to do with meeting my home visit family in the Jinja they live in. My contact person until then had been the daughter, who is also a student at Kansai Gaidai. That is where the internationality ends; the rest of the family is as “Japanese” l as I can imagine, a trait which is both culturally intriguing and extremely helpful in language studies as I am forced to speak Japanese with them. As a down side, I don’t think I have ever felt as out of place as on Sunday when I was dragged to meet the family around the shrine. The father and older brother were working as Shinto priests during the festival and seemed to have better things to do than greet me. In addition, the cohorts of Japanese people present outside the shrine were raising an eyebrow and staring at me as if I did not belong in the scenery. How could they know? The visit was a success, though. I finally got to meet the whole family, starting from grandparents. Unfortunately, the mother was really busy due to the festival, and the father and older brother seemed more or less upset by my presence. Hopefully the next time I meet them I will have the time to properly introduce myself.
-Antti