It has been a while again since I wrote my blog. I have been very busy recently and there has not even been that many interesting new things in my life. After one week my lessons will be over and after that I will have the last exams. Before the exam week I have to finish 3 reports (essays), one half in English half in Japanese and the other two in Japanese. Can't wait to finish everything. Even though it is great to have this chance to study Japanese and amazing to realize how much I have learned during this year, I would already have some break and rest.
The weather is just getting hotter and hotter and the rainy season seems to come to an end because it has not rained in 3 days. I wish it was... I broke my record for the indoor temperature in my room today when I was studying in the kitchen using the free air conditioner: +35*C. And the hallway on my floor feels like a sauna that is getting heated. I decided to check yesterday what the thermometer says there and no wonder it feels unpleasant to walk there: +43*C... Why do they make houses with glass walls because it causes a green house effect inside the dormitory?
One interesting happening this week was Hakata Gion Yamakasa, the biggest festival in Fukuoka. It is hold every year for the first half of July and the main event there is watching men running and carrying big structures on their shoulders. We went to follow that on two days. We got the first glance on Wednesday because we received tickets from a teacher on our volunteer Japanese class. They had built a grandstand to the yard of a shrine and there all the teams had a sharp turn around a pillar as fast as they can since they were competing. We wanted to get good seats so we were there two hours beforehand but sitting those two hours in the sunlight was quite tough. Anyway, following the atmosphere when the full audience cheer for the running men was surely something I cannot experience anywhere outside Japan.
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| Ice with mango taste. The best thing to eat on this weather! |
We also saw the teams on the road after they all had taken the round at the shrine.
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| A Star Wars theme "mountain" was the tallest one they carried. |
Since Wednesday was only a practice, we wanted to experience the main race that was hold at 5 am on Saturday morning. We went to the center already in the evening and spent the night out before heading to a good street to watch the festival. Our teacher from the university had told us a good place on a narrow street and it surely was much better than the big streets where there were so many people standing that the last row could see nothing. I just cannot understand who comes up with an idea to make men running many kilometers carrying heavy things in the early morning in the middle of the summer... Well, Japanese do.
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| They threw water on the runners and we got our share too.. |
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| NHK news reporter came to ask a few questions from me too since I am a foreigner. I am getting famous! |
The festival is having a history of over 700 years. The original meaning behind the floats and the men sitting there up and the water throwing becomes from a story of a monk. That monk lived in a temple in a village that had many sick people. Those sick people came to the temple where the monk threw water on them and as a consequence they got healthy. That is what the carried men and the men around are symbolizing.
One more event during the past week was a concert of an orchestra from New Cingular York. Exchange students were offered a free ticket so if course I went there. Two free tickets of 3000 yens (25€) each on the same day was quite something!
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