Doburoku Matsuri
英語だけ、すみません。 多分後で翻訳する。
I took a trip that the school sponsored today to Doburoko Matsuri. We left early in the morning and drove north to Shirakawa, which is in a valley in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture. It was raining a bit as we headed north (and stayed on and off rain for the rest of the day).
From the (Doburoku Matsuri web site), the festival is for the following:
People pray to the mountain god for safety and a good harvest and offer doburoku (unrefined sake) to the shrine to express their gratitude. While private alcoholic beverage production is banned in Japan, people in Shirakawa are given special permission to produce doburoku for a limited quantity for this festival. Doburoku looks like rice porridge. It is thick and slightly sweet.
We arrived early enough that we had plenty of time to explore and get a feel for the town, as the matsuri didn't really start in full until 2 or so. Also stopped at the location of the matsuri to get a souvenir sake cup. With that, we also got a cup of last year's sake. Had that at maybe 11am.

Had soba for lunch, plus lots of festival food at the stands around the matsuri area. William (classmate of mine) and I stuck together through much of the time - he is much more open about just going up to someone and talking than I, which was good to get us more practice speaking. We connected with a couple from Nagoya at the time we bought the sake cups. Then again at the soba restaurant. We agreed that the 4 of us would reconnect at the matsuri for drinks.
After soba, went back to the Matsuri area and watched various dances, including a lion dance (similar, but in many ways different, than the Chinese version - I have put a 5mb QuickTime Video clip of it on my web site).
Then they cleared out the area and set things up for the drinking. By this time, William had disappeared, but I reconnected with the couple. Had a ceremony where the new sake (this year's) was blessed. Then arranged seating under a big tent by laying out tatami mats (and a big scramble, like musician chairs, for people to get seated on them - here's a 4mb QuickTime Video clip of this). This seemed rather unusual, given that Japanese people are usually super polite and defer to other's needs before their own.


Overall, good fun.
1 Comments:
Hello, I was also here for the Matsuri 2005.
I was there last year as well.
Interesting, isn't it?
I'm Japanese and still find it's interesting, since this is the only matsuri that you can get free alcohol drink, must be interesting also for non-Japanese people as well.
By the way, I have also studied Korean in Seoul (only for the summer session)and my major was French.
I hope you enjoy Japan, for me, I'm afraid of earthquake, so I'm trying to get out of Tokyo!
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