Wow! I just spent the last 30 minutes trying to write a little article about this entry, but there is nothing on the net about it! I’m a little shocked, but I will fill you in.
On October 10th I was asked to take part in the Konpira Festival. Konpira is a shrine (Shinto=Shrine, Buddhist=Temple) located in Kotohira, a town right next to mine.
The cool thing about this festival is that it re-enacts a procession from the Heian Period (794-1185AD) in Japan complete with dress. (Guess who was the star attraction?) You can check me out in my gear below.
Or you can take a look at all the pictures here.
At any rate, basically the deal is on October 10th (October is known as the month when the gods aren’t around… keep reading) we take the God out of the shrine and take him down the mountain to hang out in a Japanese-inn (Ryokan). The next day, we drag him back up the mountain and put him back home.
That’s fine and all.. the problem is that Konpira is famous for having something like 800 steps and is located at the top of the mountain. Also, the God lives in a portable shrine (omikoshi or something) (or whatever… those crazy asians) which literally weighs 1 tonne. Combine that with the fact that we have to take all his stuff as well and it makes for exciting times.
My team was in charge of the big Japanese-drum (Taiko).
Suffice it to say it was ridiculously heavy.
Enjoy. It was a lot of fun. They don’t know for sure, but rumor is I’m the first foreigner to take part in the event (its been going on for hundreds of years.) neat.


wtf?
) But it was worth it…. (ie: I stood up for maybe 15 seconds.)











(think Milton, but smaller and in PEI.)

of it all. One of the teachers at one of the elementary schools I go to (who’s house this was held at) went to the forest, cut his own bamboo ramp, smoothed it out, set it up, and then proceeded to make enough glasses and sauce containers for all of us. He apologized for not having enough bamboo left over to make the chopsticks, but suffice it to say it was pretty cool. Everything was homemade, and it was a lot of fun. (That and I was amazing at catching the flying noodles…)
Earthquakes