For National Culture Day, the Yosakoi team was invited to perform at a festival in a very, very small town called Okawamura. The "mura" in Okawamura means "village", and that would be a fairly accurate description of the place. Anyhow, it was about a two hour drive from Kochi City. This morning, a teammate picked me up in her car and gave me a ride to the initial meeting point in Otoyo. From there, I switched cars and rode with two of the younger team members, Sayaka and Junko. We followed the other cars along several long and winding roads. Gradually, we made our way up into the mountains. We crossed a number of bridges in colors such as blue, green, and red. Junko commented that the red one looked like the Golden Gate Bridge.
Eventually we arrived at the festival, which was on a flat area fairly high up in the mountains. There were long rows of canopies set up in front of a small stage. Under the canopies were tables equipped for grilling. Each table was basically a square frame around a barrel-like container of charcoal. The center of the table was where you cooked everything. I think in the U.S. it's called Korean barbecue, and here it's yakiniku.
Before we could eat anything, we practiced the routine a bit and Yamanaka-sensei decided what formations we would be in. This time she had us dancing in a circle for a while, then forming two rows. Once all of that had been decided, we got bags of things to grill. In each bag there was a small tray of beef and a variety of vegetables. There wasn't a lot of time before our performance, so we had to grill and eat our food quickly. It didn't take long to cook the meat, though, because the grill was incredibly hot. Just reaching over it a little to flip the slices of meat felt like I was going to burn my hand.
After scarfing down as much of our food as we could, we were called over to get into our uniforms and wait our turn. I thought that we needed to hurry, but we ended up waiting for what felt like a long time. When it was time to come out from behind the stage, most of us stood around for a while as a few of the team members performed last year's routine. It's a cool routine, but I was feeling rather impatient and wanted to get to the dancing. Before we could perform this year's dance, Yamanaka-sensei had to give a few speeches about Yosakoi and this team's history. Much to our chagrin, she had Sasha and I come up on stage to introduce ourselves and explain how we felt about Yosakoi. When I said that I was from Idaho, a few people in the crowd shouted, "Idaho!" I was pretty surprised. I don't know if they had heard of the potatoes or what. Yamanaka-sensei had also commandeered a Japanese-speaking ALT to translate what she said into English, though he added in his own remarks in Japanese, as well.
Finally, Yamanaka-sensei let us leave the stage and it was time to perform. For some reason, we were doing the routine four times in a row. We would do it twice while marching in a circle, and twice while standing in two rows. It seemed a bit excessive, but from what I could tell, most of the people in the crowd stayed for the whole thing. It was pretty fun and I felt like I did a good job.
After the performance, we changed back into our regular clothes and returned to our yakiniku. The coals weren't as hot as before, so it took a bit longer to cook the rest of the food. I learned from the Okawamura ALT that the beef was from cattle raised right in the area. It was definitely tasty. Once I had finished my beef, I moved on to the cabbage and green pepper-type things.
Around 2:45, we packed up and left the festival. The other ALTs who had come to the festival stayed longer, but I stuck with the Yosakoi group since I needed a ride home. I rode back with Sayaka and Junko. We stopped at a bakery that Junko knew of. They made all their bread with rice flour, I think. I got a few pastries which turned out to be delicious. We also shared a cream puff with apple in it; it tasted like a cross between a cream puff and apple pie.
The ride back was fairly long and we were all tired, so we played a word game to keep us all awake (especially the driver). I think it's called shiritori in Japanese, but we have the same game in English. It's the one where you think of a word, and the next person has to come up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word, and so on. Except in Japanese it's the last syllable rather than the last letter. At first I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to hold my own since I don't have a very large vocabulary, but it turned out fine. What helped was that I didn't need to know the meaning of the word in order to use it. We played all the way from the bakery back to Kochi, and there was only one time where I just couldn't come up with a word. I couldn't think of anything that started with "nu". One interesting aspect of the game was learning a bit more about spelling. The word "ryokou" (travel), for example, sounds to me like it ends in "ko", but the final syllable is actually "u". In the same way, "atarashii" (new) sounds like it ends in "shi", but the final syllable is really "i". You pronounce it as a four syllable word, but it's actually written with five syllables (a + ta + ra + shi + i). My spelling is fairly atrocious, so I occasionally needed to be reminded of words like those.
We made it to my apartment without Sayaka falling asleep at the wheel, and they dropped me off. Hopefully they've made it home safely, as well. I am surprisingly tired considering how little we danced, but I suppose the fatigue might have more to do with staying up late last night and getting up early this morning. Forecast for the rest of my evening: eating pastries and watching Glee online.
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