Yamayaki
10am
The alarm is going off. I haven’t had to use the alarm for awhile so in my waking state I was surprised to hear it. It was Sunday. It was my day off. Why was I setting an alarm again? Oh yes, I had to watch a hill be set aflame and was going to spend the day in Nara with some of the other teachers in our group. Well, I better put some pants on then, huh? Dress, grab some left over sweet-bean buns from the kitchen and then to Unebi to catch the train at…
11:17am
No cat again. Where was Skimble? There were no food plates laid out and even his box and blanket were gone. I fear the worst for that little guy thinking of the frigid evenings in Kashihara. I purchased a cold vending machine coffee as a pick me up, I needed it, and grabbed my corner spot on the train. Then it happened and it would happen again in the forty-five minutes train ride. Each time this happens I fight a strong urge…a very strong urge. I wish I could say this area of Japanese wasn’t ripe with racism but I can’t. A month doesn’t go by where I experience the game of musical train seats. This is played by when me, the foreigner, sits next to a Japanese person (usually an elderly person) and instantly this person stands and heads for a seat putting as much distance between them and the scary white man as possible. This angers me to my very marrow and it especially pisses me off if I’ve just woken up and only had two sips of coffee in me. So this guy, scruffy looking, hair mussed slightly, makes a break for the seats at the end of the car when I sit down next to him and there comes that urge again. I want to get up, follow him, plop myself down next to him again and continue this process all over the train and into others if need be until this guy gives. Instead I screw off the bottle cap, take a few calming drinks of coffee and close my eyes. Three stops later comes what I call the Notice&Bolt. This is when somebody sits next to you on the train, notices that you are a foreigner and then heads to another seat. Usually it takes about four minutes for all this go down. Another guy, slightly more professional looking, younger, pulls this four minutes out of Sakuria station. This time people take note. A couple that may have witnessed the first seat exodus looks at me after this second one and then quickly look away. Embarrassment shows. Again, I ignore it. Maybe I have extreme body odor. Sniff..sniff… Nope. I smell fine. I got that bodywash Destiny sent me, after all! Just hold it in. You’re not Rosa Parks.
11:45pm
No seats would be empty now. A squadron of Boy Scouts has attacked the train car complete with shouting Scout Leaders trying to keep them from jumping out the windows. Every kid has to go the bathroom so two by two they are taken, wobbling down the aisle with the motion of the train, to the washroom in front of me. This is the pratfall of the corner seat on the JR line. The other is that you suddenly become the designated door holder when people want to change cars. You are also the designated door shutter. Most people don’t turn back to close the car door they’ve just left and so you either have to listen to it smash and clang as the train rumbles on or you close it. When the scouts cleared house I held the door open for them. The warm thanks and bows I received for doing this countered the feelings of anger over the seat hoppers earlier. Before they exit the kids have mighty janken competition and a group of them even engage in a small war of the O-Poppi dance! You couldn’t help by smile.
12:30
I head over to the station’s information booth to get the best location to stand for this event and I grab a map. Sara and Corey, two teachers from Toronto, walk through the station gates and we head on over to Al’s (the couch guy and teacher from Vancouver). Sara looks under dressed for the –4 weather we are expecting that night. Sara and Corey are in the same boat as I when it comes to dealing with the Company puttering along with our exit papers. Together we make a pact to not let up on our supervisor and his superiors until the papers are signed and confirmed as received by head office. Sara expresses her disdain over the ineptness of our “boss”, she’s witnessed more doing her office days in the actual office, and I am not surprised. Company standards for this sort of work are not exceptional high. Al’s the kind of guy who gets up and starts his deal in the early afternoon but today we didn’t wake him. Him and the wife were just settling down to some breakfast. A heaping bowl of natto. I tried natto. Natto is an acquired taste which I haven’t acquired. We banter, bitch, joke and an hour later we are heading into the downtown core of the city.
2:00
Sara had mentioned wanting to find a kimono for herself as a souvenir of her time here. I knew of just the place in Nara and we spent about fifteen minutes sorting through some nice offerings. These things can be pretty pricey so it is best to shop with a scrutinizing eye for kimono detail. She didn’t purchase anything. She’d lamented about not having one. She’d found some. They were of acceptable price but she didn’t purchase anything. I don’t understand people.
3:30
We walked towards the hill in the distance that was to be set on fire after a large fireworks display later that evening. The deer were out in full force today what with all the festival booths set up and more people around that could be suckered into feeding them. Lots of screaming kids running in terror from the deer, cookies crumbling in trembling hands while the parents took photos and laughed. I think, in Japan, taking the younglings to see the Nara deer is some sort of right of passage. 
As we neared the museum we heard a great booming drum. It sounded like thunder. This was followed by a slew of drums beating out a nice rhythm. This all came from the group of Taiko drummers set up in front of the museum. The drums all varied in size with the massive thunder-maker at the back of the group. I’ve seen a performance of Taiko live and it was pretty damn spectacular. This drum is called the odaiko and though this one was moveable some of these can be so large that they are impossible to move and are thus a permanent fixture inside the temple or shrine in which they were built. Not much is known about the origins of this powerful sounding brigade of drummers but most arrows point towards the battlefields of war when these drums were used to sound out a forceful boom to scare off the enemy. These days, the roots of the current drumming squads can be traced back to 1951 when a man named Daihachi Oguchi formed the first group for traveling performances. As of this writing he is still alive and drumming having formed close to 200 groups of drummers worldwide.
There is more to Taiko then drumming. There are crazy body movements and dances by the ensemble to add to the energy of the experience. The entire body is used in Taiko. It can be quite a work out. Somebody should start putting out some exercise videos.
5:00
Everybody, including me, is hungry. Sara and Corey are showering praise over the festival food but aren’t purchasing anything despite the booths we are passing. Yup, I don’t understand people. A half hour of hunger gripes and moans and we are now passing booths and restaurants and they walk on. I think inherently, as humans, we would prefer to complain about something then create solutions. I was soon going to just stop at a restaurant and hope the rest followed. Festival food is ludicrously priced. Seriously, five bucks for a piece of corn is just not rational. Sara and Corey tried to explain that you have to have festival food if you come to a festival to which I countered that I could just purchase the same stuff at a store for the same price or cheaper. “But it just doesn’t taste the same,” I was told. Humm, I’ll skimp on taste and save on expenditure, I thought. Besides, the curry and rice displays in the restaurant windows were looking mighty good.
Al’s gal had stayed behind to do some homework and she would have to catch up to use later. We choose the Kasuga Grand Shrine as our landmark. While we waited it started to snow. Well, it was more of a hail then a snow but close enough for government work. It didn’t last long, only a few minutes, but it was snow. For a few moments the Nara looked like they had a terrible dandruff problem. Al’s girl found us, rational thought won out and we found ourselves in one of the restaurants where it was warm and the food didn’t require donation of a body part to afford. Curry and rice, nice and hot, is a perfect dish to warm the cockles of the soul on a cold, winter day in Japan.
5:30-7:30
We are now at the foot of Mt. Wakakusayama. The sun is going down. A few hundred folks are with us as the festival is about to begin. The festival is called Wakakusa Yamayaki (or Grass Burning) and it takes place every second Sunday in January. The name sounds more like a dish of noddles and pork to me. Time has washed over the reasons behind the festival. Some say the hill was set ablaze in ancient times to kill the goblins and trolls that made the place home. A more grounded theory is that the hill was burned to settle territory disputes between the monks of Nara three main attractions: Kofukuji, Todaiji and Kashuga. It is believed that the conflict became so hard to control that a mediator set the heart of the issue aflame in 1760. We joked that this would be a good way to control the deer population. One can of gas, a hill full of deer cookies and out run the blazing four deer of the apocalypse!
A torch is light with fire from the Kasuga Shrine, considered sacred, and is carried to a smaller shrine set up at the bottom of the hill. Here we observed what looked like a great bonfire with priests in traditional robes gathered around in ritual preparation for the lighting of the hill. When you are standing there, dozens of fire trucks and fire marshals around you, you begin to think of the potential dangers of standing in front of an entire hill as it burns. What if the wind shifts? Things looked pretty fenced off, though, so it was all pretty safe and organized. Certainly not the madness that is Omizutori. Just before sunset the priests carried the fire torches to a large pyre on the hill and set it alight. The fire roared and reached towards the coming darkness. We shivered and shook trying to inch through the crowd towards the fire and the warmth.
Up went the fireworks at the first sign of darkness and the sky was glittering and shimmering with color. I’ll say one thing for the Japanese, they put on an amazing display of fireworks. The lights of color over the fire centerpiece made for a gorgeous image. When the fireworks had subsided the monks took their torches, light them from the bonfire and walked up the hill where one spot at a time the torches were dipped to the grass. The sporadic spots of fire made me think of dozens of small campfires up there on the hill. People soon started leaving. I couldn’t understand. The hill was just burning in small patches. The photos seemed to indicate that this place would resemble a molten lava flow. I guess I didn’t take into account how long it would take a large hill to burn. When you factor in the snow/hail and rain we’ve had the last few days you get one slow burning hill that nobody wanted to wait around to see engulfed in flame…if it would even get that far. Somebody dump some gas on this thing! My image of the entire hill going up with one toss of a match was just not to come to life. After standing around for 20 minutes watching these flames just trying to get started, half of the crowd dispersed, we too turned to leave. A bit of a disappointment, I admit, but the fireworks were beautiful and this day served as a nice bookmark to the time I’ve spent in my favorite city in Japan. When I first came to Nara last March it was for a festival and this, my final time here, was another. This was some nice closer. I’m going to miss those wacky dear and evening suppers under the great pagoda. Nara’s given me a lot of memories. On the way back to the station Sara and Corey spotted an arcade/game center, an addiction of theirs. Inside the pumped buck after buck into various machine for candy that could be purchased at the Family Mart next door for fifty cents. Did I mention I just don’t understand people? Corey did win a Nintendo clone console, though, so it wasn’t a total wash. I lingered at Al’s for an hour or so showing his wife some of the videos I’d made during my time here and then a short train coma would see me back home. Nara, I hardly knew ye’!
