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.

The town has Gassho houses, which are A-frame houses with thatched roof. Pretty interesting. Shaped like a-frame houses up in the Lake Tahoe area, but with thatch for roofs. Toured the inside of a couple of them.

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.

Then they started serving sake. I had well more than 10 of the souvenir sake cups worth before it was time to leave. Could have had much more if I wanted to get drunk, as it was very free flowing (all the people standing in white in the picture are servers). And no charge for the sake or even entering the festival (but they made up for it on the cost of the foods...).

The sake had a much more sour/vinegar taste than what we normally drink (last year's was much more vinegar tasting than this years - maybe that was just how it was made or maybe it doesn't age well). Had the consistancy of porridge or maybe a wet oatmeal (lots of chunks of white stuff in it - click on the picture to see a higher resolution version, which perhaps is good enough for you to see). But good, none the less. While this was going on, there was more traditional music and dancing on the stage set up at the end of the area. Here's a 2mb QuickTime Video clip of the dancing).

Overall, good fun.