Friendly Fish

Hello Readers!
This past weekend was Yanai City`s annual 金魚ちょちん(goldfish lantern) festival. And of course, this goldfish addicted girl just had to go! So I was a little ambitious in my goldfish festivity planning because I had decided to wake up and drive over to the train station at 9:00 so that I could be in Yanai enjoying all the goldfishy fest by 10am. At this point I had not been aware that the festivities wouldnt really begin until around 4:30, leaving me with about 6 hours to fill until goldfishing began.
So anyway, in an attempt to alleviate our 6 hour wait, Matthew and I (my fellow islander ALT) decided to wander around Yanai and take some more of the goldfish lanterns since it was such a beautiful day. While wandering around the main goldfish decorated street we found a little...I guess craft place...where we could pay 900 yen to build our own little goldfish lanters. And obviously I couldn`t refuse!!!! The elderly Japanese woman who was teaching us how to make the goldfish lanterns had a pretty decent handle over the English language, well compared to most of the people that I have met so far. She was really excited to learn that Matthew and I were both living in Oshima (a pretty close distance) and even more excited to learn that I would be teaching an えいかいわ (adult conversation class) twice a month starting in September, so we ended up exchanging information and she told me to please let her know once my classes started because she would like to attend.

After our arts and crafting Matthew and I ended up wandering for about an hour in the sweltering hot sun trying to find this delicious pizza/pasta restaurant that my predeccesor had recommend I visit. Everytime we asked someone if they knew where the restaurant was they said (in Japanese), `ahhh, I know (have heard) of that restaurant, but I dont know where it is`....and so we continued to wander in a mostly aimless direction in hopes that a) we would randomly run into it b) that we would run into someone who knew what and where the restaurant was.
Luckily, we did finally find someone who could give us some directions, and as it turned out, by that point we were only about a block and a half away.
The food ended up being super delicious, I got a basil pesto pasta with some garlicy garlic bread (yum). But the really awesome part of this was that while we were eating this young Japanese guy and some of his friends came over and started chatting with us in English. Turns out he had been living in Canada for awhile, so his english was pretty darn good, and he was hoping that we wouldn`t mind exchanging contact info so that we could hangout sometimes and he could practice his English. The reason why this qualifies as being `really awesome` is because as you may recall, my island is filled mostly with the 50+ crowd, so meeting a group of Japanese people in their mid-20`s who would want to hangout is kind of a big deal. I really really want to make friends outside of the JET group, not that the JET`s aren`t nice, but I think it will make my time here much more fun and interesting if I can befriend some Japanese people (preferably close to my age, but really any age is fine as well).

Ok I am going to skip how we spent the rest of our 4 hour wait, because it really isnt interesting (mostly hiding out in any place that had air conditioning) and skip straight to the festival.


By 4:30 there were huge crowds of people, and vendors lining the main festival streets. There were a couple of game booths that ranged from traditional Japanese Kyudo (archery) to fishing games. And the vendors sold everything from food, pokemon cards, to live goldfish. And by this time the actual streets were filled with a number of goldfish floats (see above). Matthew and I joined the groups of people thronging the streets so that we would have a decent view once the parade commenced, but then Matthew ovserved, `where the heck are these fish going? They are completely blockaded in up ahead`. And sure enough, there was no way there fish were moving more than maybe 1 meter because there was a huge crowd of people barracading them in. As it turned out, these fish got marched to right in front of the huge blockade and the taiko drums would begin playing and the crowd would begin chanting ( i couldnt make out the words) and all of a sudden the float bearers (for lack of a better word) would begin swirling the little fish around in circles for about 30 seconds and then stop and change direction. Every single fish did this once, then the blockade was broken up and they slowly proceded further down the street with continued chanting and drumming. It seems like it was a competition, but I have no idea how a winner would be determined.


(This was my favorite goldfish)



(A goldfish getting spun around)

I am beginning to feel more confident with driving. However there is one street that I HATE HATE HATE driving on. And the unfortunate thing is that this is the street that leads to the other ALT`s apartment and to two of the schools I will be teaching at. Here are the reasons why this road sucks: It is a super narrow road, it is the main road running through Agenosho (and thus is heavily trafficked), there are not many parking lots so people park on the side of the street, making it an even tighter squeeze, aside from the car traffic there are all these little obachans that are walking along the side of the road and also kids on bikes or scooters. Also, the crazy Japanese drivers come careening around corners without the slightest concern for anyone being on the other side. Huuumpph. Ughhh I hate driving here.
Luckily while driving there is this button that will pull in my car`s `ears` (side mirrors) which gives me a slight bit more space.


The worst road ever, it is much much worse in person.

Why are all my posts about fish?