Howdy everyone! Two months in Japan have flown by, and I anticipate myself saying the same thing again in the next blog at three months. So much has happened since my last blog. October has been a month full of festivities, tragedies, and challenges for me, but overall, it has still been full of love and determination.
Aki Matsuri (秋祭り), Matsuyama Autumn Festival!
While the first half of October still felt like summer… the weather began to cool, the leaves were shifting in color, and the roar of revelry had begun! Before coming to Matsuyama, I was informed by Julia, the prior fall/winter season intern, and her blog about a big festival that happens around the first week of October. I initially didn’t know too much about it outside of some chaotic shrine ‘battles’ and apparently people losing their shoes. However, there was so much more to it!
The buildup to the festival was amazing to see. Every day, more and more Shide (Shinto zigzag-shaped folded paper) would appear across the city, and o-mikoshi (お神輿) were displayed in community hubs. When walking through Gintengai (銀天街), I would frequently see a shop full of men working on their o-mikoshi late into the night, making more progress as they practiced their chants, decorated their portable shrine, and rallied together to practice lifting the shrine. It was inspiring to see the o-mikoshi evolve at the same time as the city was getting more into the festive spirit.
While I was told that the festival is from October 5th to the 7th, I assumed most of the activities would be closer to Dogo, as I was told most festivities and the o-mikoshi battle would occur over there. However, on the night of October 5th, as I was out looking for dinner, I stumbled onto a large parade of all eight o-mikoshi’s marching through Okaido (大街道) and up across ropeway street! They were followed by a truck of traditional drummers, and smaller portable shrines being carried by children and young teens.
Fast forward to the final day of the festival… while I missed the morning ‘battles,’ I learned later that day they were called the hachiawase (鉢合わせ). I thankfully made it just in time for the last match in the evening! The purpose of the hachiawase is to bring together the neighborhoods of Matsuyama and entertain the deities enshrined within the o-mikoshi. It follows similar rules to tug-of-war, but instead of pulling the opponents over the line, both sides are trying to push their shrine over the line. After the final battle, I was able to witness one of the closing events for the festival, the miya-ire.
The miya-ire is the carrying of the o-mikoshi into the shrine, in this case, Isaniwa Shrine. However, before they can enter the shrine, the o-mikoshi must be carried up the 135 steep steps of Isaniwa Shrine! While these shrines are portable, the o-mikoshi is still incredibly heavy and must be carried out by a large group, leading to this task not being just about raw strength, but also coordination and teamwork.
Overall, the aki matsuri was an amazing time! The festival acts as a way to foster a sense of community for Matsuyama, as well as honoring the traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. While I did not dare get directly involved in the festival, being able to witness such a special piece of Matsuyama culture firsthand was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I will never be able to get their chants out of my head! It really showed the determination and strength of the people isn’t from the might of one individual, but from the community’s ability to rally together in the pursuit of a collective goal.
Approach to the Inmost Cave… Not as Scary as I Thought
As I mentioned in my previous blog… My Japanese isn’t the best. I’m currently not fluent in the language, but I do know enough to get by in basic conversations. Another thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned up to this point, but you can probably guess from meeting me, is that I really don’t like public speaking. I can practice every day and still feel underprepared! So, when I am being asked to make a presentation for a Japanese high school class fully in Japanese… I can’t think of anything more terrifying to my poor introverted heart.
Despite knowing it was something that some of the past interns had done, I was uncertain whether my work would be different, as there seemed to be a bigger focus on working together with the Thai students. Nonetheless, Shiba-san asked me to create a presentation on Canada/Canadian culture for his high school class, which he teaches on October 20th.
While it was a relatively simple topic, having to design a presentation in a secondary language made the process far more complicated for me, so I chose to start slow. Making the slides in English was easy enough, but then I had to make the script in English, then again back to edit the slides to fit the script more, and then finally started the most tedious process… the translation. For the most part, getting the initial wave of translations done was pretty easy; I’d try my best to translate the slides, then script on my own, then cross-check to make sure I used the same kanji/phrases on both ends. But the tediousness would arise when I’d repeat this process multiple times after getting either Shiba-san or his assistant, Kakegawa-san, to go through and edit any mistakes or unnatural phrases I had made, until I got both the script and slides to a decent enough place. This was not the end of production, however. Due to my novice Japanese, many kanji used in the script are still very difficult for me to read, so I’d need to break them down into their furigana (hiragana) form. While I was able to do most of it with relative ease thanks to Kakegawa-san, the script was rather dense at this point.
With the script finally being readable and the slides finished, it was finally time to practice! With a majority of the words in the script being brand new to me, getting the pronunciation down was my biggest goal for this presentation. Everything else in my presentation could fail, but if my pronunciation could be understood, then I’d count that as a win. I would practice going through the script every day, making small improvements to my pronunciation and building up my confidence that this presentation might actually be a win. However, tragedy struck. I got horribly sick the week before the presentation! The script was too long for me to practice before my eyes would get strained, and my voice was way too broken to practice pronouncing the more complicated words/phrases in the script. So, my solution was to simply rest and hope that I feel better as soon as possible. Although it took me almost five days to recover and about three days before the presentation, I realized that with the current state of the script, I would need way more time to prepare and get back to the same confidence level I had before getting sick. In a bit of defeat, to compromise, I asked if I could do a hybrid of Japanese and English, with the English portions being the parts of my script that were already in the slides, and the Japanese portions being the information not provided by the slides. While this may sound like I’d be doing most of the presentation in English, a large portion of the slides are just pictures of Canadian landscapes/regions while I try to describe why they’re significant to me, so it still came out to around 2/3rd Japanese in the script. It wasn’t perfect, but it would be good enough.
On the day of the presentation, I was a ball of nerves. I had been practicing the modified script almost nonstop since recovering, but I still didn’t feel like it was enough. Knowing me, though, I don’t think I would ever have felt like it was enough.
By the end of the presentation…
If I’m being totally honest with myself…
It went…
ok!
The students all seemed to be interested and engaged, asking many questions by the end of it and reacting to the photos/things I had to say. Shiba-san told me afterward that it was “perfect.” I know my pronunciation could have been better, I stuttered even in some of the English portions, and I could have had better body language… but it went ok! After it was done, it felt like a wave of stress and anxiety just disappeared, and I could finally breathe again. Although I feel like I’m most often my worst critic, this was the first time in a long time that I felt actually good about something I could’ve done better in. In the past, whenever I’d make mistakes like this, my perfectionism would often take over, and I’d torment myself on what I did WRONG while ignoring what I did RIGHT. The effort I put into this presentation to be the best it could be, while not reaching that goal, still felt good. It was nice being my best supporter and not my worst tyrant for once.
Sendai and Tohoku (仙台と東北): A City of Tears and Determination
The tour to Sendai and the other neighboring cities in Tohoku was probably the most significant part of October for me. However, I think I’ll be keeping it briefer compared to the previous section. Mostly because I still don’t know what to make of it.
It was by far the busiest trip I’ve been on, with an incredibly strict schedule from 8 in the morning with checking out of the first hotel, till 10 at night when we’d arrive at the next hotel after dinner. Kakegawa-san, Shiba-san, and I were joining a larger group of about ten students and two other teachers from Ehime University for an excursion around Tohoku visiting various ruins and memorials dedicated to the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (東日本大震災) that happened on March 11th, 2011. Most people outside of Japan might recognize this disaster, as it is what led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown.
In case you’re not aware, the Great East Japan Earthquake was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake recorded in the world since modern seismography began in 1900. The earthquake caused up to 40.5 meters tall, powerful tsunami waves to hit the Tohoku region, with many residents given a mere 10 minutes of warning to evacuate. The freezing temperatures that followed hindered rescue greatly. As of 2021 reporting, there were approximately 19,700 deaths, 6,200 people injured, and 2,500+ people still missing, with a report from 2015 indicating that an additional 228,863 are still living away from home in temporary housing or permanent relocation. This disaster not only brought vast destruction to the region but also uprooted the daily lives of people across Japan. Whether that be through the loss of life, loss of their family, or the loss of their home.
Most, if not all, of the ruins we visited during the trip were of elementary schools from the disaster, and while many of them had similar beginnings to their story, they all varied in their conclusion. Some were able to protect not just the children of their schools, but whole communities. One was able to protect their community from the Tsunami but was within range of radiation from Fukushima, another had fires caused by cars and electrical damage, and another was next to a river but had poor evacuation protocols. All these school ruins and memorials stand as reminders of this day and the importance of disaster preparedness within one’s community.
For me, these places were a lot to handle. I’d been to many other memorials and museums in Japan, but something about these felt different. I think what made these so significant was just how recent these events were. We were being given tours by people who lived in the area at the time. They’d tell stories about that time and what the area was like before the disaster. While I couldn’t fully understand their Japanese, their emotions still carried through.
However, the longer this trip went on, the more I began to feel guilty. I was beginning to feel burnt out. Because of the go-go-go nature of the trip, I was given very little time to think about what I was experiencing. I got very little sleep each night, little time to be alone with my thoughts, and no time to reflect.
Why did some schools succeed at protecting the community and others fail? Was it a lack of knowledge of the population or an inability of the building? Why were elementary schools the ones left standing? What happened to high schools, middle schools, or other disaster safe places? How would I act if a disaster of this scale struck BC?
All these questions were swirling around my head, but I had little time to ponder and reflect on them. By the time I got back home to Matsuyama, I was drained. So much information, so many stories, and so many emotions to filter through.
While I’m making tiredness sound like a bad thing, I am still incredibly thankful to have experienced such an impactful place. The class still found ways to have fun between the long drives and mournful atmospheres, with every day ending off as a large dinner with the entire group, filled with great food, warmth, and love. I might not have gotten to know everyone in the group, but it felt nice to be welcomed into the community.
