Towada Matsuri

So, this past weekend was the Towada festival. As Ewen apparently drunkenly declared onstage last year, it just might be the best festival ever. The organizers of the festival graciously reserve a float each year to be carried by gaijin and invite all of the JETs in the area as well as any American military personnel who wish to participate. Towada is a pretty big city (according to Sunil, it may now be close to Aomori-City in terms of population) and fittingly, has a pretty big festival. In case you haven't figured it out by now, Japanese festivals are comprised of three key ingredients: Large, usually elaborate floats, copious amounts of good food and dangerous amounts of alcohol.

Small booths like the one pictured above lined every available inch of real estate along the parade path. Most sold various grilled meats, fried meats or things with meat inside of them. Ah, Japan.

This Godzilla float wins my official award for coolest fucking float of all time ever.

Pictured above is a Japanese child perusing the selection of kabuto mushi, known in English as huge, disgusting beetles. Japanese kids love these things, although I'll never understand why.

When I told the people in my office that I was planning on going to the Towada festival, the senior office lady told me that I had to play the fish game, "It's very difficult but very enjoyable," she said. Upon arriving in Towada, I realized that the game entails trying to catch goldfish with a scoop. If you are successful, I think you get to take the goldfish home with you. That's really exciting, I guess?



So the float was really heavy, obviously. At first, I naively thought that we were simply charged with carrying it down the street. Wrong as rain. As soon as we hit the pavement, the guys marching alongside us started motioning for us to raise and lower the float as we walked, so as to create a lowrider-like bouncing effect. Luckily, there were a bunch of big, brawny military guys there who didn't seem to mind carrying the burden while pipsqueaks like me simply pretended to be helping. Soon I found out exactly why G.I. Joe and company were in such high spirits when faced with the prospect of carrying this thing for the length of the parade route: the festival organizers saw to it that everyone was properly lubricated for the event. At the end of each block we were told to put the float down. Then, people brought a cart up from the rear, filled with ice-cold beers. Then, after about two minutes, we would move the float another block and then stop again. So, of course, what ended up happening was beer chugging on a scale so massive it would make a Dave Matthews-listening, frat boy date rapist blush. Unfortunately, a sudden downpour forced us to take the float back more expediently than initially planned. Usually parades in Japan stop for nothing but it was really coming down this time.

Every time the float was either lifted or lowered, we had to perform a ceremony afterwards which consisted of hand-clapping and shouting. The dude pictured here rode on the top of the float and clicked those sticks together to tell us when to stop and start.

Afterwards, we all went back to the town hall for some sort of international welcome party. They attempted to placate our Western palates with McDonalds hamburgers and American-style delivery pizza. They were successful. Did I mention that they continued to supply us with free beer throughout the party? Consequently, as seen above, Ewen entertained the assembled crowd with a repeat performance of last year's drunken speech. This year's topic of discussion was the greatness of Scotland and how England is comparatively "fookin' rubbish".

After they kicked us out of the welcome party, we all went out en masse to some bars and karaoke places and eventually splintered into various smaller groups. I eventually ended up at a bar interestingly named "Cherry Beans" with Sunil, Charlie, Ryan, Mike, Andy and the crazy Japanese dude pictured above talking to Sunil. I forget his name but his English was really good and he was a real riot. I think we eventually turned in to Sunil's house at about 4:00 am, fully satiated by the nightlife that Towada had to offer.