At the closest city to our town, about 30mins drive away, every May they have a festival (matsuri). 12 large floats made of wood (dashii) come from different areas of the city to take part, they are decorated with silk embroidery and lanterns, and at the front, there is usually 2 drummers, a few flute players and an actor, the actor is usually dressed as a fox, a tanuki (raccoon dog), a lion, an old man with a pouting face, or a samurai. These floats are pulled / pushed around the town by a group of people dressed up in old style too, normally announcing their arrival. At certain points there is also small stages set up similar to the floats. As the floats travel around the town, when they meet each other or arrive at a stage, they have a musical face-off, usually trying to be the loudest or most lively group.
The main event is when all the floats come to the centre of the city to have a big face off, normally 3 at the same time, to a judge in the centre.
The rest of the festival consists of food stalls, selling all sorts of food, ie, Yakisoba – fried noodles, takoyaki – savoury dough balls with octopus inside, baked potatoes, Okomonoyaki – a type of pizza made with cabbage and topped with veg and ham and my favourite, baby custella – small round buns made of pancake/custard dough. Yum!
There are also competition stalls, some you try to catch small gold fish using a very small table tennis style bat made of paper, the trick being to scoop the fish before the paper disintegrates.
I started learning Japanese in 2000 when I lived in London, there I went to a night school at Thames Valley University for 1 night a week for 30 weeks per year. The class size was quite small, about 5 people, so it was ideal as a starter, the first year was basic vocabulary and learning Hiragana (the phonetic alphabet) and Katakana (the phonetic alphabet used for foreign words).
The second year was more difficult vocabulary and grammar and continuing practising writing.
The third year, the Uni didn’t have enough students for a level 3 class, so I decided to just do the 2nd level again to practice.
In 2003, I moved to Japan for 1 year, my learning curve took a steep increase as I was surrounded by the language, there was a lot of opportunity to speak and practice. Also, to help my learning, I went to a volunteer school 2 days a week. I wrote a diary in Japanese as practice for writing, this is when I started to learn Kanji (the characters that represent words)
Due to some server problems I’m starting my blog again, it’s bit silly really since I only restarted it in April.
Anyhoo, let me know what kinda stuff you want to know about Japan.
