At risk of
sounding like Homer Simpson*, one of my lifelong dreams has been to see a
Bon Odori festival in Japan. Bon Odori as practiced by the Japanese American communities in the Bay Area and LA was always the high point of summer for me as a kid - my mom, Maggie and I would all put on
yukata and join hundreds of other JAs as they marched in circles to the scratchy recordings of syrupy enka ballads or - at some of the bigger festivals - the thunderous beat of a taiko drum. Some dances, like
tanko bushi we knew by heart; others - there was one diabolically complicated
katchi-katchi dance in particular - we flailed our way through. We ate greasy, sugary festival food, we'd break out of step to wave at my dad videotaping on the sidelines, we'd win armfuls of wan-looking goldfish in tiny plastic bags, none of whom ever survived more than a week. It was awesome fun.
So one of my main reasons for visiting Gujo Hachiman was its famous month-long Bon Odori celebration. There's dancing almost every night in late July through mid August, plus five nights of all night dancing. ("Five nights!" our ryokan-owner said tiredly. "I like one night.") The night we were in town wasn't one of the epic all-nighters but I was still blown away by how much energy everyone had for their monthlong nightly dance party:
above: Check out how happy these guys are!
Live Bon Odori music was probably the most immediate difference between Japanese and stateside festivals.
Also the dances. Like the dances back home, anyone is welcome to jump in at any time, but these - wedged into a narrow street - felt very different, with more footwork, less fans, towels and katchi-katchis, and if some of the gestures were familiar, the sequences themselves were not.
above: Iain goes for it!
Unfamiliarity was not a problem for Iain, who quickly threw himself into the line and went for it anyway. It seemed pretty silly to come eight hours by train and not join in, after all, so after a moment of being self-conscious, I jumped in after him. The dances weren't too hard to pick up, and we didn't get many stares - though I'm pretty sure some of the dancing experts who stick to the middle of the circle made a point of dancing beside us so we could watch their movements at least a few times. I hadn't danced in Bon Odori in a good eight or nine years - and I'm not much of a dancer in any situation - but as the expressions of unbridled glee on the two guys in the picture up earlier can attest, Bon dancing is really fun. It felt unimaginably cool to be doing it in Japan, these dances that were so different and yet familiar to the versions that I grew up doing in the States. I am so happy we got to do it.
above: the empty streets near our ryokan
I had forgotten how tiring Bon Odori dancing can be. After three or four dances, we stopped to get some french fries (soy sauce mayo flavoured!) from one of the food stalls; the rain that had been falling lightly got a bit heavier, and we wandered back to our hotel through empty lantern-lit streets, leaving the rest of Gujo Hachiman to their dancing.
* Also, like Homer, I wouldn't mind eating the world's biggest hoagie: a year spent in Philadelphia clearly had a bigger influence one me than I realized. Mmm, hoagie.
