Football at Konan and the Nara Mountain Fire

Konan Univeristy students go on their 2 month spring break in February, but the school got emptier early, the co-op bakery and the 100yen udon stand closed and the sports turf became available, so me and some ryuugakusei went to hire some badminton equipment and a volley ball.

What started out as a little batting-volley balling round by the end of it became a viscous game of football with some Japanese students. One of them even pulled off his business suit and played without shoes on. I liked their way of choosing teams, a sort of rock paper scissors without the scissors, because then the teams were randomised, boys girls Japanese and ryuugakusei:

 and although I hated playing football as a kid it was so much fun to play! Robert (the engineer from Germany whose hobby is photography) took some great photos of everyone:

the girl kneeing is Amy the tea loving ninja and Caroline is the one in white

It was a great stress reliever. Games like football translate through all languages.

However, because it was so impromptu none of us stretched or warmed down, so I was trapped in a world of pain the following day – my body felt like a bruise everywhere, including my ribs, arms and neck - everywhere but my hands and face, no exaggeration. Me and Amy were so stiff and sore, I’ve never known ache so thorough as that before because I guess I’ve always stretched, so I learnt the importance of that which I never really appreciated before. I couldn't so much as lift my arm without feeling the hurt.

That day after football and a quick episode of Coffee Prince, I left for Akashi to visit the Kobe Gakuin’s at their local Irish pub called Murphy’s. We chatted mostly on the topic of Sherlock BBC and Benedict Cumberbatch and watched Bridesmaids with cookies and beer in Kesters bed, and next morning I had every intention to go with them to see the Inoshishi races in Sasayama Prefecture:

pic stolen from Elen's facebook page because Elen's face is HILARIOUSyou can see the inoshishi signs in the backgroud 

But when I heard that it was just a race and inoshishi meat they had to offer I decided to go with the Konan group going to the Wakakusa Yamayaki festival in Nara instead, and oh my life I am so glad I did! Despite walking and sitting both being painful for me from the football workout the previous day, it was so much fun.

 The Wakakusa Yamayaki is an annual festival during which the grass on the hillside of Nara's Mount Wakakusayama is set on fire.

Nara used to be the old capital of Japan around the 8^th century, which is significant because always before then the Japanese used to move their capital around whenever their emporer died to avoid the pollution of his death. Nara is so clean and pretty – and since it used to be a major city its temples and art from then are preserved there. Because of the Buddhist influence (which results in bad feeling from killing living creatures), the place in filled with deer just wandering around freely!

They are so used to humans that they just don’t care if you approach them.  I was sad that their horns were carved off to harmless little nubs, but I could see that it was the condition for them to be able to do whatever they liked.  At first they were cute, and the amazement of being able to go up close and pet deer was wonderful, but the bambi got a lot less cute when they kept head butting you for your food, so they lost their novelty after a while.

Larry trying to reason with the deer that he had no food

me also trying to shoo them away



Caroline foolishly feeding them bread - they were relentless after that



We arrived around lunchtime so we had time to see the Daibutstu (lit. translates to ‘Big Buddha’) before it closed, which is the biggest bronze Buddha in the world housed in the biggest wooden structure in the world. The souvenirs there are pretty cheap, and it’s worth going in to see. The temple smelt great from the incense too.



Caroline, Ashley and me at Todaji - the daibutsu is inside this awesome wooden building



incense

wherever you touch this guy you'll heal in that spot -
I couldn't reach all of it though

Daibutsu ~

even grown women crept through this hole in the pillar for some reason

Then we grabbed some hot food from the row of street vendors for a good price – I had taiyaki and yakisoba (fried noodles) – and brought a few souvenirs for my host family.

 The air was freezing so I had to eat quick with no gloves on before keeping them in the heat of my pockets for the rest of the night.

It got dark, and the crowds began to gather to the field. Unlike the Japan I’ve seen so far, which has always been buildings and concrete in the cities and towns, Nara is more like the countryside with trees and huge spaces of grass, so rare to us now living in the city. We saw some of the crowd moving up and had read from the event info that there was some pre-fire ritual or something so we followed them up.

The view from the crowded hill was of the city lit up, and we sat on the hill huddled together for warmth facing it.

Amy in-particular was feeling the cold and was hurting the worst from football, so we sat around her. Just as Michael said ‘are we facing the right way?’ the fireworks screamed from behind us and we leapt up and started our videos at the firework display – it was so big! And creative, some fireworks were shaped like hearts and wild boars! I’ve never seen anything like it, how is that even possible? Some of the bangs from the fireworks went right through me, we could feel it resonate with our chests. Caroline got especially excited when she realised the music being played was the soundtrack from the ghibli film Princess Mononoke, and glancing around at the crowd everyone had their faces turned up to the sight – it was just so well done!

I may have missed Britains bonfire night but that, that was the best firework display I’ve seen since the fireworks at Himley celebrating the millenium! The combination of the inspirational music from my favourite ghibli film, the excited atmosphere for the grand finale to begin, the creativity of the fireworks, being with friends, full from good food and warm in my heffer coat, and god, being in Japan – I really can’t get across how perfect everything felt at that moment. All that was missing was family and the other people in my life to experience it with me. And then, they set fire to the freakin' mountain.

We were right up close to see it, as soon as the fireworks ended the black figures lining the firework display area holding touches lowered them to the dried grass and it spread like a forest fire, slow at first but it got huge and smoky. The wind was in the right direction so the massive bellows of smoke rose away from us, we could feel the heat of it but were far enough away that it wasn’t too intence, and we could see the amount of people gathered perfectly now, lit up from the orange flames.

We decided to retreat to the field bellow when the smoke got too thick to see the fire properly to see what it looked like from a distance.

 We got the train back to Osaka, grabbed dinner at a restaurant at the station and came home shared the mochi souvenir I brought for my host family .

I looked up the meaning behind the festival later and found that there was none! According to http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4118.html, it’s just a tradition from a long forgotten reason, but they went all out with it anyway.

By the way my camera sucks so I used everyone elses photos of the occasion - .therefore the pics are curtesy of Ashley, Michael, Amy and Larry's awesome camera skills.
All in all, those three days were pretty epic.

Next stop: SOUTH KOREA