Assume that it is December 11, 2012. That's help put things into perspective a little.
A few weeks ago, the other
Kirishima ALTs and I went to a festival in Hayato (the southwestern part of
Kirishima). It came to us as a surprise
as this is the first year that ALTs were allowed to participate. I’m not too sure why they like us so much…
I woke
up at 5am just to get dressed, eat breakfast, and have a cup of coffee, before
heading down to the Board of Education (the BOE, for short). Once we were all accounted for (one guy was
late. He’s almost never on time for anything), we drove up to the Kagoshima
shrine, which is located in Kirishima.
I’m not sure why they called it the Kagoshima shrine because it’s not in
Kagoshima city, but there’re a lot of things I don’t understand. So there we were, at an elementary school
nearby, and laid out before us was samurai gear! That’s right, we dressed up as samurais. The mens’ armour was quite heavy, and helmet
was a pain to wear over a long period of time.
The female armour wasn’t nearly as bad.
We wore layers upon layers, so you can imagine how hot it got with the
sun shining at its fullest like a typical summer’s day in Canada. I didn’t have any sunscreen (as usual), so my
face turned beat red in the hot sun.
At the
shrine, there was a ceremonial thing, and then we all paraded down on a long
8km walk down to the sea. Now, normally
a walk like that wouldn’t be so bad, but you should’ve seen the footwear we
had. They were sandals made from string
that was woven together. I couldn’t go
jogging the following day because my feet were still sore. So there we were parading, and occasionally
(which means all the time), us women would shout out a chant... “Chesto ike!
Oh! Chesto! Oh!
Chesto! Oooohhh!” That made the walk much more exciting, and
the other two female ALTs and I got to lead the chant quite a few times.
Periodically,
we would stop and watch as the priests did a special ritual with a flute song
and slow dancing. There was a lot of
standing up, sitting down, standing up, sitting down, and bowing. (I didn’t bow because of my Christian values,
but it was challenging not to with everyone around me doing it, especially
considering it was a great honour to participate in the festival in the first
place.)
At long
last, we reached the sea, and there was yet another ceremony where the priests,
and even one of the ALTs, put a fish in the water. I’m not sure exactly what it signifies, but
it probably has something to do with giving back to the gods.
Overall,
despite how tired I was afterwards, it was a great time, and a worthwhile
experience.
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