Budget Trouble

Mashiko Pottery Festival - November Edition

Anna Ikeda — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:02:00 +0100

Version:1.0 Last Tuesday we had a public holiday, something that one of my charges so inventively described in Engrish as “bunka no day”. Gotta hand it to that 5 year old, did the best he could, which is a lot better than most adults could manage in this country. But, I’m not here to rant about English (or lack thereof) in Japan, because that’s something as obvious as the sun rising every day.

So, instead, let’s talk about this mysterious “bunka no day”, which translated to proper English is simply “culture day.” For most people here it was just another day off work. When asked about the significance of “culture” in the name, my Japanese coworkers simply shrugged and said, “shopping?”

But I wanted real culture, and by god (or a higher power of your choice), I was gonna get it.

You see, the great thing about Japan is that there is always a local festival going on somewhere, pretty much every weekend of the year. And non-weekend public holidays are no different.

The festival we went to on Tuesday also happened to be very conveniently located in the nearby town of Mashiko. I’ve written about Mashiko before. And I’ve been to Mashiko before. But never during its semi-annual pottery shindig.

Now, I’m not a fan of pottery, ceramics, whatnot. I’m perfectly happy with cheap and tacky dishes from a 100 yen shop. So it amazes me to no end that people are actually willing to pay thousands of yen (hundreds of dollars) for stuff that looks absolutely unremarkable and very frequently – downright ugly and crude. Of course, there are exceptions, but during my visit to Mashiko they were hard to find.

Euan Craig is happy, the Pottery Festival was a success, he said on his blog. His stuff is fabulous, and if I were independently rich, I'd definitely buy it.

Out of the hundreds of pottery stalls that were lining the streets and parks and every other available surface, I can honestly say I liked only three. One artsy-shmansy Clive Barkerish inspired (or so it looked to me) work by Hinotama. And two very functional selections by Euan Craig, a professional Aussie potter who’s settled in Mashiko (ridiculously expensive) and Genevieve Navarre, a French woman who’s been living in Japan for over 20 years (just expensive). And isn’t it odd that the two functional ones I liked just happen to be made by foreigners? Hmmm… Interesting…

Hinotama, on the other hand, is totally from another planet, if not from another universe.

But he was selling. The stuff wasn't cheap at all, but boy, was it selling...

This is his take on maneki neko, I guess.

But that’s Mashiko for you. The local potters there only really have two chances a year to sell their works to the public, and hence the prices reflect that fact. And because pottery snobs (like my mother in law, for example) actually buy the stuff (about 20 dollars for a set of chopstick resters, anyone?), then I guess everybody is happy.

Now, for the practical bits:

There are two Pottery Festivals in Mashiko, one in May and one in November (normally around November 3rd). Mashiko Tourist Association will always know the exact dates, alas, as most things in Japan, their website is in Japanese only. I guess even with all the foreign potters living in their town, they haven’t figured that foreigners may want to visit the place as well. No wonder that ceramics and pottery themed tours from the US don’t include Mashiko in their itineraries.

Getting to Mashiko is more or less easy. It’s one of the stops on the Moka railway. And if you want, you can even travel there in style – the original choochoo steam engine does stop there en route from Shimodate to Motegi. I wrote about it here.

And now, if you excuse me, I have a gyoza festival to attend. Now, that’s what I call culture!

PS. More photos from Mashiko here and here.

Kanuma Buttsuke Autumn Festival part 1

Anna Ikeda — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:05:13 +0200

This weekend we were supposed to go to Gunkanjima, but because somebody in this household had a hissy fit about it, the trip had to be cancelled. We’ll give it another shot later this year.

So instead, I have another festival for you. Yeah, yeah, I know, this blog is turning into a “local Japanese festivals that nobody cares about” blog, but what the heck, someone has to write about them, and it might as well be me.

On the way to the shrine

And what’s going on in Kanuma this weekend is the annual Buttsuke Autumn Festival (鹿沼ぶっつけ秋祭り. And no, “buttsuke” has nothing to do with butts. Sorry. (Though yeah, in Japan, you never know, that’s for sure.)

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the Autumn Festival. In Kanuma. A wholly unremarkable town on the JR Nikko Line. But as most wholly unremarkable, provincial Japanese towns, it has a totally fun and remarkably grand festival.

Going to the shrine

The festival is quite old, too. It commemorates the time in 1608 when after long wars, the Imamiya shrine was being reconstructed and there was no rain. So local folks got together at the shrine and did what most folks during severe droughts do the world over – they prayed. And lo and behold, it started to rain. Where the carved, wooden floats fit into this, I am not entirely sure. But our grandma (who’s actually from Kanuma) said that her grandma told her that her grandma told her that way back when the floats were actually portable stages for dance and theatre performances. And the performances were dedicated to the gods at the shrine.

How the dog saw it

Then some shogun got his kimono all in a wad over something totally unrelated to the celebrations and forbade singing and dancing and extravagant celebrations. And so in the Edo period the good people of Kanuma turned their energy to carving more and more opulent floats instead.

Entering the shrine

So what about those “butts”? “Buttsuke” (ぶっつけ) has nothing to do with butts (unfortunately). It simply means that the floats (or the mikoshi, when you have a mikoshi procession) collide, while loud music plays and fair maidens with flowers in their hair sprinkle rose petals and dance in celebration. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

And that’s the story of the Kanuma Autumn Festival. More photos here and here.

More Engrish

Anna Ikeda — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:17:33 +0200

The sad part was that when I took this photo this t-shirt was being worn by a junior high English teacher (Japanese native) who saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.

yabu-something or the other

Anna Ikeda — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:01:34 +0200

In recent days “Budget Trouble” has been experiencing some serious, heavy-duty budget trouble, because after all, MacBooks don’t grow on trees and Photoshop has a price tag that only Photoshop can have. So, instead of blogging, yours truly has been busy doing what most people with budget trouble do, namely, making money.

But even being totally broke (swine flu notwithstanding) did not stop us from having fun. Free fun, of course. Last weekend was a five-day affair in Japan, and on one of those days a traditional archery festival – Yabusame – was held at a shrine in a nearby town.

Technically, yabusame (流鏑馬) is archery on horseback, and as all things in Japan (except for washlets perhaps, but hey, even that’s debatable) was invented during the Kamakura period. When was that? A long time ago.

But because the Japanese are obsessed with all sorts of traditional things, such as J-pop, manga, wearing wooden flip-flops and punctuating every (no matter how brief) conversation with at least five “eeeehhhhhhs” and “aaaaaahhhhhhhs”, they still organize yabusame events.

The festival we went to took place at the Nakamura shrine in Moka (yes, Moka again, after all, it IS my favorite town in Tochigi). And besides archery, there were other things to watch there as well. My preferred activity was the sword waving, where individuals dressed in traditional clothing (there you have that "tradition" bit again) waved swords and cut bamboo sticks (yes, those were real swords) while hordes of spectators snapped pictures.

Hey, look, it's Azumi.

The archery event was last and sadly, it was very anti-climactic. There were only three riders, their shooting was not so good (blame Asahi super dry, I guess), and between the dust and the mosquitoes I’ve had enough of it after about 2 rounds. Sitting in the car and reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" proved a much more exciting way to pass the time. But hey, the festival was free, so I know I have no right to complain.

More photos of the event here and here and here and here.

Featured on Lonely Planet today

Anna Ikeda — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:35:16 +0200

LP is featuring my blog post about cat cafes on their homepage today.
Here's a screenshot to prove it.

I'd say, not bad for someone who bitches and moans about LP all the time.