Today citizens all across Japan celebrated 秋まつり (aki matsuri, or Autumn Festival). My friend Saki kindly invited me to celebrate with her in her hometown area, which is a two-hour train ride from Kobe. I enjoyed the trip out to the countryside, and the celebrations were immensely fun to watch. I feel as though I had a true cultural experience today.

I met up with Saki and with Maddie, another foreign exchange student, at the train station in downtown Kobe around 9:30 A.M. We then rode the train for two hours to a town called Fukusaki. Saki herself is from Shinmachi, a smaller town near Fukusaki. Fukusaki is a sort of centrally located area between many small towns in that area of Hyogo Prefecture. To celebrate the autumn festival, each local ward brings out a yatai, which supposedly weighs 1,400 kilograms, and ideally is held up by seventy men. The yatai is difficult for me to describe because I can't find an exact definition for it. It is a type of cart, stand, or framework made out of bamboo. On top of the stand is a gilded structure covered in brocade and rich fabric, elaborately adorned with tassels, lanterns, and other designs and objects. It looks like a one-room house, and inside are four taiko, or drums, and four boys, ages 10-12, play the taiko as the (ideally) seventy men carry the yatai through the town streets toward the shrine where they will pray for three hours to ask for a fruitful harvest. Fukusaki is famous for celebrating the autumn festival because twelve yatai from twelve surrounding ward areas are brought to Fukusaki, and then together in one huge procession the twelve yatai are carried to a nearby shrine area and the three hours of prayer commence.

I enjoyed the atmosphere, which was full of excitement and merriment. Only men carry the yatai, and only boys play the taiko. Women and girls enjoy the festivities through watching. The men carry the yatai many kilometers through the countryside (or through the city if they celebrate in an urban area), and it is very heavy. So to help ease the burden, men wake up very early (before seven) on the morning of the autumn festival and commence drinking at about seven in the morning. They drink for a few hours (or until sufficiently drunk), and then carry the yatai to the shrine. Thus there were many drunk, energetic men (anywhere from ages 18 to ~70) running through the streets today, and I saw some very surprising behavior (men chugging beer and dancing on the sidewalks) and heard some funny comments (things people normally would not say if sober). The yatai looked extremely heavy to carry, however, so everyone was grunting and sweating as they bore the yatai up the road toward the shrine. Groups from local wards were always conscious of their wa, group harmony, and energy, so the groups had to work as a team and always appear energetic while bearing the yatai.

I was so happy at the end of the day to have partaken in such a festival. I feel as though I experienced a unique part of Japan and that I learned a lot about Japanese culture today.