Kamakura Redoux

Ok so I've updated the previous entry, regarding the trip to the imperial grounds.  That section is now fully completed.

This entry is a chronicle of my second trip to Kamakura.  This has been my favourite day thus far, for a number of different reason.  Firstly the people, secondly the luck, thirdly the festival:

I went there with mikal and Ashmi Thapar, who I had met all of six minutes before stepping onto the train together.  She then left us to visit Yokohama, and we soldiered on.  We arrived at the main Kamakura shrine area, the very same as in my 'kamakura in the rain' section, where a large festival was taking place.  This was the  original purpose of the visit, but I didn't know there would be a horseback archery demonstration at the same time, so my interest was immediately piqued when someone walked by with a longbow, a full head taller than he was.

We ambled around for a while, unsure of what to do.  We tried several times  to get a seat, but they were reserved; standing room only!  Standing room in Japan equates to enough space for roughly half a person, and we were two decidedly un-Japanese guys.

So we asked a police officer, essentially, what's up with this then?  He didn't understand English, but one of the competitors came up to us and handed us a form, for free, that costs 5,000円 and has to be booked well in advance.  So we got into the special seating area.  We had no idea what was going on, but we were essentially sitting next to some serious, prim and proper looking Japanese who were constantly greeted by dignitaries, and at one stage, the head of the tample itself.  These were serious people.  Who they were, only god knows.

So we were sitting around six feet from the track these horses were running along, and maybe forty feet from one of the three targets placed along the track.  We had the best seats in the house for the premier event in the kamakura calendar.

The event itself was pretty awesome, as you'll see from the pictures I'll put below.

Mikal, being American, got bored after an hour or so, and then left to buy things and whatnot, so after the entire tournament was complete I ambled around the shrine and watched the taiko drummers for  about an hour.  In retrospect I must have looked something of a berk, standing in front of a stand of drummers, mouth agape and non-moving.  However, I cannot get enough of those drummers and that type of music.  I could, and literally did, listen to that for  hours on end.

At this point I moved onto the koi ponds and sat there, watching people feed the massive carp in the grounds.  After being transfixed by this for some unknown amount of time I ambled up to the main temple, where a crazy-awesome photographer struck up a conversation after perving me apparently to 'check the light.'  So we headed to a bespoke starbucks, the first in Japan to be housed in a building that's not some ugly, prefab american monstrosity.  We talked for a couple of hours, and it turns out that he's immense.  He's a bloody good photographer, but I think he needs to work on his marketing because it appeared to me that he missed several tricks in promoting himself through the internet.  You need to work on this sir!

So after this I met back up with Ashmi and we toured the temple grounds by night.  They had a light show, projecting images onto the temples and shrines themselves.  Considering the conservative nature of the country, this display was something completely unexpected, and despite the occasional image that didn't quite work because of the unusual shape of the shrines, it was a really good 'installation.'  Unfortunately I couldn't capture any pictures, but Ashmi tried, so hopefully I can steal some from her.

We went back and watched the same taiko drummers that had now been playing for six hours, they were all still smiling and joking, fantastic.  They have several instruments to create the sound; two small drums, one large, pipes/flutes and a kind of metal ball on a stick, hitting a metal container.  As you can probably  tell I've no idea what it was, and trying to describe it is bloody difficult too.  They were getting so into the performance that they kept breaking the stick though, which made me laugh.

At around 9PM we went and ate at a small restaurant that turned out to be really expensive, but the most amazing place to eat in.  After keeping them open for ages past closing time, and with smiles on their faces (through gritted teeth) we left.

I arrived back home at around 12:30, and it was an amazing day.

The photographs roughly follow the proceedings described above.  These guys are the drummers.  All the players can play all the instruments, and they switch round at intervals.  They can switch round in the middle of playing, pitstop style.  Fantastic.  Amazing.  Brilliant.  I cannot praise this music enough.

The guy in the masculine red shirt is playing the hand-stick-pot thing.

I'm going to bombard you with pictures of these guys.

More pictures!!!

Remember I said this kind of looked like a stage, a few days ago?  Guess what it is!

Feed the fish.  They feed the pidgeons with fish food too.  Strange.

Look at those peons without tickets!  Losers...

The roped section in the middle is where the horses run.  Some of them were quite feisty, and someone got run over at the start line.  They run individually and fire at boards, examples of which you'll see in a second.

These 'shrine maidens' are everywhere helping out and about.  They're essentially free help, while the girls wearing different coloured skirt things are the proper workforce.









I'll update this post when I have some more free time...

Ok so the post that's standing up there has a wooden board placed on it, with the backing piece to stop stray arrows.  The bit that's behind that is another layer of security, to catch the arrows that are so far off course that someone might get beaned by them.

The arrows aren't tipped, but even these blunt ones can do some damage.  They weigh a surprising amount.

What an amazing setting!

This is a traditional getup for shinto priests.  I don't know how high ranking this guy is, but he was leading the archers around on their parade lap.

This old boy didn't compete, but he lead the first set of archers around.  I've just noticed, looking back at the photo, that everyone is blinking at exactly the same time.  That's scary.  Conformist culture has gone too far when everyone blinks together...

The little ones were carrying the helmets behind each archer.  It's kind of like ye olde knights of yore back home I guess.  King Arthurs servants and whatnot.

Look at the size of that bow!  They don't fire it in the way you might expect, bolt upright; instead they fire it gangster style, with a length of the bow against  the side of the horse.  It's kind of difficult to explain, but you'll see pictures of it later.

This picture kills two birds with one stone.  Firstly, there's some badass samurai looking guy, which is really cool.  The first one I've seen here.  Secondly, those wooden boards the kids are carrying are the targets.  When the arrows hit, they shatter too, which looks cool.

This guy was all tooled up.  Look at the number of arrows he has, and the number of helpers.  He also had the strangest hat, which makes him a winner in my books.

So they paraded up and down this strip, and on the second time round I managed to snap this, to show how detailed this guys armour is.  This may well be ceremonial, but I don't see how it would protect you from anything, even if it was made from titanium; there are so many exposed parts!

Oh no, he's trying to get artistic!  I really like this photo though, it shows the massive amounts of colour that is missing from everyday life here.

The procession stopped in front of the dignitaries to our right, presumably to pay respects.  It was a prime opportunity to capture the congregation all together.

This guy gets his own little column, for looking so depressed while wearing what is essentially a really cool costume.  Shame on you sir!

The old lady directly to our right, with the black floppy hat on was really nice.  She offered me the seat next to her on several occasions.  However the people to her right were extremely xenophobic, they put their straw hat on the seat next to the old lady, in this picture you can't see it, but it was on our side, away from them!  Essentially when I sat down the old lady in black was separating us, but they still tried kicking us off to put their hat down!  It wasn't even as if they were saving it for someone, because no one turned up to claim the seat, and the entire transaction was completed wordlessely.  There is no age divide in terms of gaijin phobia here, it's purely on an individual basis.  This is both good and bad, particularly when you are lost, picking the right person to ask for help can be hard...

Another shot of one of the competitors.  I only included this because it's reasonably focused, and you're about to witness a number of blurs, that could be anything...

These guys are arranged in height order!  They replace the broken targets after each round and collect the arrows.  The procedure for handing the arrows over is one fraught with such technicalities that it would only be considered in Japan.  Imagine Wimbledon ball boy training, in a long skirt/dress thing, with gangly, unintuitive arrows that have to be turned this way and that over and over again.  The boy at the far end gathers the arrows and walks down to this middle station in a demure and conservative way.  He then meets one of the guys at this station, they bow slightly, crouch down facing each other and the one with the arrows turns them over, always in the same direction.  They both extend their arms, and the one without arrows places one hand underneath them, and one hand above them.  Once the exchange has taken place, they now arrow laden one turns the arrows over the opposite way to the first guy, they both stand up and bow again, turn at the same time and walk off.  The guy with arrows has to put them under his arm in a specific way.  Bearing in mind he's only 15 maybe, he has to carry a dozen arrows under one arm, with one hand.  Needless to say it looked quite precarious at times.

Onto the blurred photographs!  This guy has seated the arrow and is about to fire away.  Getting the timing right is hit and miss at best.

 This one is blurred, but it's mid-miss, so I included it because it looks cool.

A millisecond before he fires the bow.

Again I was just a fraction too early with this one.  The sports option on the camera makes all the images really grainy, but the focus is quicker, and the shutter reaction time is reduced too.

This guy was rubbish.  He prretty much gave up on this target.

 

This is the one.  It's about to obliterate the target.  They're really close to the target in terms of distance, but timing and technique in seating the arrow means a lot of people were rushing, and therefore doing what the above guy did.

This is the arrow handing over ceremony.  These kids were receiving on the job training.  The announcer mentioned that the kids here were from a number of schools, and this event serves to educate them in the specific traditions of the area.

This is a kind of little slideshow chronicle of events.

 

 

This is the group photo with all the competitors and school children helpers.  This is probably the most colourful thing you'll see, this side of shinjuku.

This is a slightly more professional looking musical outfit.  After every round they switched instruments, so everyone gets to play each instrument.

These kids were barely tall enough to hit the drums properly, but they were really good.  The middle one is getting a helping hand from big sis!

The whole setup is really primitive, and easy to assemble/disassemble.  It all goes onto the back of a van at the end of the day.  These kids  were doing the round robin thing too, except they were all fascinated by whatever was happening on the right there, I think it was food...

The colourful splodges in  this godawful photo are projections I talked about above.  The picture gradually changed as time went by, into a lot of different things.  It was all patterns rather than specific images.  Zebra stripes worked particularly well.

These guys kept breaking things because they were getting too enthusiastic.

This is the restaurant we visited after the amazing day of travelling.  It was expensive, but it was really nice as well.

The place looked a complete hodge-podge and mess, but it was kind of cool to be honest.

  That's my adventure to Kamakura, again.  All in all an amazing day.