entry nº 16 // 20180204

back in early november, shoko took me to see KARATSU KUNCHI. her friend miho’s family is from there, so shoko + i took the train out to karatsu to help her family out w/ some food prep, and to watch the festivities, of course. 

basically, for three days, neighborhood-based teams of guys (+ also girls, up till maybe high school or so?) dressed in colorful outfits dragging these big wooden floats called yama through the streets of the city while chanting and playing music. the yama are made of brightly-painted, sculpted wood, are many years old, weigh a ton, and are completely beautiful. some of them even move, thanks to a rope/pulley system inside. kids sit inside the floats playing tunes on flutes and drums. all of the people pulling are chanting the whole time, led by guys perched atop the yama. old dudes participate. most everybody comes back to karatsu for this festival every year, so in many ways it’s a homecoming, a chance to catch up w/ your neighbors and all these people you’ve known since you were a kid. it’s awesome. also, everybody’s drinking beer starting early in the morning, too. there’s tons of food everywhere, and after the pulling’s over, people go around visiting friends’ houses, eating more, drinking more, making merry, etc. 

but anyway, i’m getting ahead of myself. after taking a big lap around the city (which is, by the way, fairly small, and includes some pretty tight streets, low-hanging telephone wires [some of which i’m told were specifically raised in order to make more clearance for the route the festival takes?]), the groups + their yama end up at this big schoolyard that is filled with a couple of inches of sand, so that the groups basically have to step on the gas real hard, so to speak, pulling-wise, and get going pretty quick so they can keep up their momentum once they hit the sand. it’s impressive to watch, because once the yama reaches the sand it gives this big lurch forward that seems, to my inexperienced eye, totally precarious? but also exciting, and awesome. the yama get a chance to pose out in the schoolyard there for a bit, and then eventually, through lots of heave-ho-ing, the groups get the things pulled out of the sand, back onto the street, and back to their home neighborhood. 

ended the night back at miho’s family’s house, where all the dudes from the neighborhood crew rolled through later on, including the “higher-ups,” i.e. more esteemed members of the team, including miho’s uncle, who was super nice. everyone was quite blitzed at that point when they all showed up, talkative and friendly and red-faced, and in a way it felt kind of cool to see them up close, in the sense of like, “holy shit, you’re the guy from on top of the giant turtle float from earlier today!” like ken griffey jr. walks into the bar you’re at after the baseball game or something.  

(and the dangerous thing, here, was that anytime your glass was anything less than full, someone would come by and fill it with beer. which, for a compulsive beverage drinker like me, is not a great idea. it’s bad enough at restaurants when the server keeps my water glass full, which translates into me having to pee a double-digit amount of times in the next couple hours, but when alcohol is involved, yikes.)

anyway at some point all these dudes were seated around the huge table, and there were some speeches i didn’t quite get the gist of, but then miho’s uncle called me over and w/ a big smile introduced me as “tom cruise,” which i mean, from a sufficiently zoomed-out viewpoint, close enough right? and somehow a moment later i was seated right in the midst of all these guys, drinking + doing my best to keep up w/ the conversation. it was mildly surreal, and super fun.