Hotaru Opera
Hold me closer, tiny hotaaaaruuuuu
You knew it had to happen, right? Don’t pretend to be shocked or anything. I mean, I’ve been living in this country for nearly a year now. Eventually, we all knew it would come to this…
That’s right, I bought a yukata!
Perhaps I might have mentioned, once or twice, that Tatsuno is famous for its Hotaru Matsuri. Please recall the HallowIna entry for me in a ridiculously (awesome) hotaru costume, which I wore as a gesture of solidarity for my fellow Tatsuno hotaru. Well, last week was hotaru maaaaadness. Tatsuno’s main drag was abuzz with festival stalls, selling everything from kebabs to crepes. Little children were wearing adorable outfits, people were banging on drums and carrying shrines around like nobody’s business. It was a Tatsuno I had never seen before; there were so many…whaddya call ‘em? Oh yeah, PEOPLE.
Just look at them all!
Oh, the shrine carrying!
Oh, the drum banging!
The week before last, my friend Honami asked me if I’d like to dance in the festival with the people from her neighborhood, that Sunday. What a question, of course I wanted to dance in the festival with the people from her neighborhood on Sunday. Would anyone need to think about that question for more than twenty seconds? Then she asked me if I had a yukata, and I said no, but that I’d been wanting to get one anyway, so I’d make sure to procure one before the big day. Satisfied, we both went our separate ways, which happened to lead us both to the teacher’s room, since this was all taking place at work.
That Friday I set out to buy a yukata, and on Honami’s suggestion, first visited the kimono shop in Tatsuno’s little shopping center. As luck would have it, they were having a special sale, wherein you could buy a yukata, obi, and geta (the shoes) for under 3,000 yen. Under 3,000 yen? Under 3,000 yen!?! Including the shoes? Zounds! (I didn’t need to go to anymore shops after this one.) The women were very helpful, especially when I sheepishly revealed that I had absolutely no idea how to wear the garment I’d just purchased. They told me to come to the shop an hour before I needed to be wherever it was I was going, and they’d help me get dressed. As you can see, I did, and they did, and all was right with the world.
I was to meet Honami and the rest of the group that evening, at 6pm, in the parking lot of a green building. After the formal greetings, I was given a tiny little can of beer, and we all trouped out into the street to line up. I covertly whispered to Honami, asking whether we were going to practice this dance at all before the parade started. No, we were not. Oh well, at least I looked yukata-fabulous.
Once the music started and we all started moving, I began desperately trying to follow along with the women standing in front of us. The streets were absolutely packed-just packed! The dance itself was slow, so that wasn’t a problem, it just…wasn’t intuitive. There was a lot of fan clapping (we’d all been given fans in the parking lot), and wrist twisting, and I was really doing a great job of mangling all the hand movements. I didn’t care, though, it was an incredible experience. Here I was, in the main street of this tiny town, dancing this silly dance with my community. Nevermind that I was doing a suck job of it, that didn’t matter; I was out there, doing my best, and that’s what counted. It sounds corny, and as though I’m trying to affect some assimilation of Japan-ness when I say it, but that’s not it at all: It was just nice.
After I finally thought I had the dance down pat, we all stopped and took a little break. I was handed so many tiny packets of peanuts that I started stashing them in my voluminous sleeves. After a few minutes, a new song started and we began a new dance. Sigh. After getting down with this dance for a while, the dancing portion of the evening was over, and the massive crowd started to disperse. I said good night to Honami because, a) My feet were starting to hurt just a little bit, and b) I really, really needed to pee.
Say cheeee-zu
My hard, wooden shoes, which look fierce, nevertheless
Last Sunday, I walked out to the park to actually see the fireflies. The weekend before last, that of the dancing and shrine carrying, had been the beginning of the week long festival. The weather was still a little on the cool side at that point, and a teacher told me that we’d probably have to wait until the end of the festival to see the hotaru, since they like hot, humid weather. Well, it was certainly humid that night-Just stepping outside made me feel clammy all over. The Tatsuno hotaru seem to prefer sitting in the grass and bushes than flying about, unlike Virginia fireflies. It really was gorgeous, and I did my best to take some pictures, even though it was nighttime and I had to turn the flash off because it makes the hotaru nervous. I seem to have picked up some paranormal energy or something in this last picture. Perhaps it’s the angry soul of a dead hotaru who, made too nervous by the flash of some inconsiderate foreigner’s camera, flew headfirst into the river. Rest in peace, my little friend.
Fatal Frame III: Hotaru’s Revenge