Danjiri Matsuri

Masako Terahara, Heejun Kim, Benjamin Taylor, Sean Kelly, Michelle Macau

September 14, 2008... The ETC-JP team made its way to Kishiwada, a city south of Osaka and joined thousands of spectators from all over Japan who came to view the Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri Festival.

Described as the “running of the bulls” except with portable shrines (danjiri), the 300 year-old festival began as a spiritual time to pray for an abundant harvest. The 34 shrines or floats, from individual neighborhood guilds, are hand carved by local carpenters, and weigh upwards of 4 tons. They are paraded through the town of Kishiwada for two full days in mid-September.



Not motorized in any way, each shrine is pulled by long ropes by 500 to 1000 citizens of Kishiwada. Men, women and children of all ages join in this celebration. Working both front and rear levers in unison, the danjiri teams literally skid their heavy floats around each street corner…done quickly to the beat of drums and shouts of the pulling team, corner turning is one of the most dramatic elements of the festival.

The excitement was made all too clear when in the late afternoon, one of the floats turned a corner and, right before us, several people stumbled. Quickly, the danjiri team working together pulled on the ropes and was able to slow down and control the heavy shrine. Meanwhile, those who stumbled were assisted by other team members and the tragedy was happily avoided.



The ETC'ers, escorted by Japanese language sensei, Masako Terahara, also had the opportunity to visit the Kishiwada castle and try on happi coats at a nearby second hand kimono shop.

- Michelle Macau

Nintendo museum Arashiyama

We took a trip on Sunday to Arashiyama to see the Nintendo history museum. It was great. Just to the right of the entrance they were selling DS systems and a game I haven't seen anywhere else. Just to the left of the entrance were lockers in which to check your shoes, bags, and expectations. The history of Nintendo, you must remember, is about 30 years of video games preceded by a long and rich era of traditional Japanese poetry playing cards.


That isn't to say the influence of modern Nintendo wasn't present. The first 20 minutes of the museum is an interactive room with a floor full of HDTVs. Specialized Nintendo DS units provide 2 interactive exercises- navigating a bird's-eye map of the area and locating specific cards from Nintendo's original game, as well as location-sensitive detail on each card on a wall display that spans the periiter of the room.

The next room has another pair of interactive experiences- a 2-screen immersive session of a simplified version of the actual card game, and round standing consoles with a series of minigames based around the cards and poets, in a peaceful virtual koi pond.

The second floor of the museum is a card showcase, with multiple decks from various eras and a giant tatami room containing a series of manequins representing poets featured on the cards from various eras in Japan's history.


The DS software for sale includes the 2-screen card game and a version of the map exercise. I bought a copy for myself if anyone wants to see it when I get back. Michelle could be convinced to buy a copy for the ETC if anyone expresses an interest. Unfortunately, it's only available in Japanese, and thanks to Nintendo's recent push to include more educational incentives in software, it includes a fair bit of kanji and requires a significant knowledge of classical Japanese poetry to play well.

Games

A couple weeks ago, I died and went to heaven. It turns out there are a lot of classic video games in heaven, which is more or less what I expected.A lot of classic games. No, really. A lot.

As in walls completely full of things that haven't been seen in the US in decades, if ever. All for quite reasonable prices.
I'm not entirely sure what happened, the details get kinda fuzzy around the time I found Star Ocean: Blue Sphere mint in shrink-wrap, but I woke up $90 poorer with an entirely too cute PC Engine, half a dozen games, and some nice pics. I hope to find my way back some time.

Danjiri Matsuri

A couple weekends ago we attended a local festival called Danjiri Matsuri. A Danjiri is a giant wooden shrine on wheels. Matsuri apparently refers to "over a hundred people from the particular town hauling something all over creation and taking the corners at ridiculous speed." In addition to the danjiri themselves, there were plenty of vendors and festival food to try- roasted squid tentacle, grilled whole fish on a stick, fried Pikachu, you name it. We also spent entirely too much time with a wonderful if potentially crazy kimono shop owner. He gave us all discounts, which was nice, and he loaned Ben a pair of real-looking katana to have him stand in front of the shop and do publicity stunts... I'm still not sure how to assemble a slide show here (the whole back-end is in Japanese), but I'll try to transfer our pics from the trip onto Randon in the near future.

Towels

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels...

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

quotation from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams www.douglasadams.com

Unsurprisingly, the same holds true for getting around Japan. A towel is one of the more useful things you can have in your possession at most times. It is useful for, among other things, fashioning an impromptu gaijin twist-headband or turban, placing in your lap as a substitute for the traditional western napkin (Japanese napkins are tiny rectangles of nonabsorbant tissue paper measuring perhaps 6"x8" unfolded), mopping the sweat off your face after a few hours running around one city or another in the hot muggy pseudo-summer months, sheltering from the rain when you accidentally leave your umbrella at the office/apartment, or simply drying your hands (the bathrooms near the ETC office are strictly bring-your-own-towel). Traditional Japanese towels are not incredibly absorbant by western standards, so bring your own bath and beach towels if you want them. A small Japanese hand-towel, however, will suffice for day-to-day keeping-with-you, and should run no more than $3 (300 Yen) at a local convenience or souvenir store.

Surviving ETCJP 02 - The Spaces

- Slide Show of ETC Spaces -

ETC Japan located in Osaka's harbor area of Suminoe may be bigger than you realize. Despite only having a handful of students these past two semesters, ETCJP has the housing capabilities for several teams with as many as 4 individual project rooms and 2 teams could easily share a single space as they equate to the size of roughly 2 ETC Pittsburgh lounges. It's my hope that in the future we can fill such a large space. It's really big!

The ETC provided apartments are quite large as well and have the amenities needed to survive in Japan. Here is a breakdown of some of things (not including objects left by previous students) that are in the apartments:
[Apartments]
Rooms:
- Western Style room
- Tatami (Japanese style) room
- Toilet closet
- Bathroom area with separate bathing space
- Living area with attached smaller dining area
- Kitchen
- Hallway
- Patio
Bathroom:
- Washing Machine
- Shower
- Ofuro (Japanese Bathtub)
Kitchen:
- Pots and Pans
- Silverware
- Chopsticks
- Refrigerator
- Gas Stove
- Tiny Oven in the stove about 6 inches wide, a foot deep and shallow
- Sharp kitchen knife
- Chopping board
Living Area:
- Table
- 4 Chairs
- Tiny, legless (doggy) couch
Sleeping Areas x 2:
- Japanese Futon
- Comforter
- Thin Blanket
- Pillow
General:
- 2 Space Heaters
- 2 Fans
- Lights for each room

Things to Remember to bring:
- Towels
- Deodorant (hard to find stick kind in Japan)

Some of the Apartments may include extra:
- Rice Cooker
- Blinds
- Water Heater or Hotpot
- Drawers, Tables or Shelves

It's also good to bring creature comforts of your own. I for one brought a body pillow and a PS2 with me and so have other students in the past. A couple of us, including myself, brought monitors as well so we can enjoy digital media as well. I also find it nice to appreciate something from time to time from my hometown. Luckily I can buy Heinz ketchup here, which satisfies me. Previous students have had things like hot sauce, Hershey's chocolate and books brought from home. Photos are always nice too.

The office is comfortable and has a lot of space to move around. There is a Wii, a small lounge area (for now), an area with bean bag chairs and fold out furniture to crash on. There's also a refrigerator, microwave oven/toaster, water heater and tea set. If space is available, we'll also set up an individual Skype room for private calls to the states. The ATC, in which the campus is located, and the attached WTC have huge shopping areas with tons of choices for food. There's also several convenience stores inside. If this campus has one serious edge, it's that you really REALLY don't need a car. You can get anywhere in the country by trains and subways and a wide variety of food and snacks are right down the hall. It should also be mentioned that there is a wide range of professional video compositing and sound resources available on the floor above us in the iMedio offices. All in all, it's a good campus with a lot of space and the appropriate software to work. We're in the process of getting a computer hardware upgrade as well.

Come see for yourself!

Surviving ETCJP 01 - Language

Some people may tell you otherwise, but it can be very hard to get around Japan only using English. Even a handful of Japanese can be very helpful for finding where you're going, getting food, asking for help, etc. I can't teach you Japanese (I barely know much myself), but I can introduce you to a few things that have come to my aid.

Japanese consists of three alphabets: hiragana for native words, katakana for foreign/borrow words and kanji, a complex yet meaningful series of thousands of characters borrowed and adapted from Chinese. Though there are some signs that will use Roman characters (romanji) to spell out things phonetically, in order to read most things in Japan, you need to have some grasp of these characters. Here is an online resource with charts that can explain things in more detail:

http://www.japanesein20weeks.com/basics-hiragana.shtml

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Even Japanese people sometimes have difficulty with their own complex language and you'll notice that a lot of them often carry an electronic pocket dictionary. These dictionaries can run anywhere from 50 to 1500 dollars based on the sophistication of the software. Instead of buying one of these stand alone dictionaries, a lot of the previous ETCJP students bought a specific piece of dictionary software for the Nintendo DS:

DS Writable Kanji Dictionary is very useful because you can find the meaning of characters simply by writing them into your DS. Useful!

I found the software for sale online here, but I paid half that when I bought it in Japan: (Can you hold off?) http://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Dictionary-Sonomama-Rakubiki-Jiten/dp/B000O2S9VQ/ref=pd_sim_b_68

A free game created by Michael Herring, one of my fellow ETCJP pioneers, can help you drill kanji and Japanese words in a fun way!: Kanji Invaders

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Knowledge of basic Japanese grammar can help you decoded bits and pieces of what is being said to you. A standard Japanese sentence generally starts with the Subject followed by the Predicate and then ending with the Verb, but even that can change. All in all, the Japanese make sense of it using things called Particles. Wa, Ga, Wo, Ni, He, Ka, Yo, etc. These single character place markers establish everything from what it is you're talking about to whether you're asking a question or not. I have yet to find a good web resources for Japanese grammar, but I can recommend the following books:

Japanese - The Spoken Language

Japanese in MangaLand 2

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Finally, a handful of commonly-used, idiomatic expressions can be very useful. "Toire wa doko desu ka" or "Where is the bathroom?", could you imagine getting by without that? I found a couple sites here that have a few, but honestly you can find resources like this anywhere. Be prepared!

Conversational Japanese Survival Phrases

Japanese Phrases for Travelers

- Bennosuke