Today Okaasan (my former host mother), Kotone, and Obaasan (Okaasan's mother) went to the Braブラまつり(BuraBura Festival) in Takomachi, a small town in the countryside about an hour outside of Chiba. "Bra" comes from the name of a town in Italy, and the phrase "Braブラ" (pronounced by Japanese people as "bura-bura") is a play on words of the Japanese onomatopoeia "bura bura," which means to walk in a meandering manner, figuratively speaking. At a bura bura festival, people who live in the area cook various types of foods in mass quantities and serve the food outside their houses to festival goers. So I was able to sample various types of vegetables, a peanut stew, mochi and dango (sweets), grilled sweet potato, etc. by walking around the village and going to people's houses. I was a little worried about the communal serving bowls for mass numbers of people due to the rampant influenza that is currently plaguing Japan, but I couldn't just not eat anything. I went to the festival with my host family, and I wanted to enjoy it. One has to be careful at these sorts of festivals to not eat too much at one place, otherwise one's stomach will quickly fill up and it will be difficult to enjoy all the various food.At the end of the festival there was an event called mochimaki, in which men climb up on a tall platform and throw hard mochi, rice cakes, out to the festival goers. People can catch the rice cakes and claim them as prizes, and then take them home to grill and eat. I was standing next to Kotone, and the men began throwing the mochi. I was jumping up and down and scrambling around trying to capture as many as possible. I ended up catching two and retrieving two from the ground. Obaasan didn't partake in the event, but she held my coat for me. After all the mochi were thrown, I found Obaasan and Okaasan. Okaasan's pants were really muddy, and she explained that everyone was really aggressive when trying to get the mochi, so she was knocked over. Then the three of us couldn't find Kotone. We looked all over and finally saw her coming toward us with a man we didn't know. Then we noticed that something was wrong. She had blood all over her arms and shirt and was holding a wad of tissues up to her nose. When she arrived, she explained that she was hit in the nose by a flying mochi! It took a while for her nose to stop bleeding, too. Of course it's horrible that she was hurt, but how many people can say that they've been hit by a flying mochi?
Anyway, I feel lucky to have met the Ueki family. Thanks in part to Okaasan's job as an event coordinator for Chiba Corporation, I have attended many events in rural areas, and I feel that I get a unique view of a different side of Japanese life that not many other foreign exchange students get to see by going to these events. Thank you, Okaasan!
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