Mikoshi in the Japantown Parade
Today I went to Japantown to help carry the Mikoshi in the Sakura Matsuri parade. My friend Kiyomi and her family help to organize it every year, so she got a bunch of friends together to help carry it. A mikoshi is a portable Shinto shrine that is used at festivals to give the god of the shrine a tour around the neighborhood. This is very common in Japan, and there are even places where they have dueling mikoshi, where they batter the neighboring shrines mikoshi into submission, or at least attempt to.
There were two mikoshi in this year’s parade, and we helped carry the large Taru Mikoshi, or barrel shrine. It's called that because the mikoshi is made up of a large pyramid of sake barrels on top of a wooden platform. There was definitely a sake theme to the event, with everyone wearing happi coats provided by sake companies, and plenty of drinking to go around.
We got there at 10 AM to get dressed in Happi coats and little white shorts. I chose the Japanese style, so I had to ask for help to figure out which way they went on. They then wound a big white cloth around my stomach for support. Apparently the Mikoshi is very heavy and you need it. For some reason they don't think to wind cloth around your shoulder, though, which is where everyone gets bruised and raw. We also wore little tabi shoes and sake company happi coats, which is ironic since I don't drink.
Just as we finished getting dressed, a group of about 50 pilots-in-training from JAL showed up. Apparently they have a training facility up in Napa where they spend 2 years learning how to fly. Who knew? I guess it's a pretty nice perk to be able to visit someplace like Napa Valley during your training. Anyway, they all got matching JAL happi coats. Since they were fresh off the boat, or plane, I guess, they were among the most enthusiastic participants, with innumerable cheers.
We hung around for a couple of hours and ate lunch before meeting up to carry the mikoshi. First, everyone warmed up with some sake, and then Japanese style calisthenics with much shout-counting in Japanese. We practiced lifting and shaking the mikoshi, which really is quite heavy. It's amazing no one ever drops it, but I guess that's why they had over 100 people to hold it. Of course, a lot of people dropped out as the march went on. They also didn't let really tall people carry it, because they would be crushed down to the height of normal people and get injured.
The whole parade is fairly long, but since the mikoshi is so heavy, we started out 4 blocks from the finish. We watched the whole parade go by and cheered everyone on. The mikoshi leaders kept running out into the parade to offer sake to those of age, and especially those of significantly more than sufficient age, each of whose drink was heartily cheered by the JAL contingent.
When the last of the parade had passed by, the mikoshi leaders stripped down to their fundoshi (the Japanese loincloths that Sumo players wear), climbed on top of the sake barrels, and we were underway. The leaders use a whistle to tell everyone when to raise, lower, and shake the mikoshi. Once we got the shrine moving and out onto the street I realized that the mikoshi was a lot heavier than we had thought. We bounced our way down the street until we reached the first intersection and put the mikoshi down on stands to rest.
You can see some pictures of the SF Taru Mikoshi at http://flickr.com/photos/tags/tarumikoshi/. In one of the ones from 2006 you can even see a tuft of my hair peeking out from behind the woman in the yellow happi coat.
One of the hardest parts about moving the mikoshi is that since everyone is packed in so tight holding it up, you have to step in unison otherwise everyone is stepping all over everyone else. I'm not sure if it was my fault or not, but my left tabi shoe got unfastened every single block.
I didn't see any of the crowd because I was too busy lifting and chanting "seiyo" (no idea what that means) to notice anything. Some of the other mikoshi people were filling pots with water and splashing them all over us. The march was a blur of water, shuffling feet, and the omnipresent crushing weight of the mikoshi on my shoulder. I folded up a small towel to cushion my shoulder (since my shoulder blades or something stick out like little vestigial horns), but it didn't really help. As I write this tonight my shoulder is still red and sore.
When we got down to the last block, which seemed like it took forever, we started spinning the mikoshi around and bouncing it up and down. It didn't seem like anyone had much energy left to bounce it around, especially since we shed carriers as we reached the end of the march.
After that, we set the mikoshi down at the end of the parade (4 blocks has never seemed that long!) and went to the hot springs to shower off, followed by bento and lot’s of drinking. Lot's of Japanese people living here in the US seemed to come out of the woodwork for this festival, including a large contingent from Sunnyvale, of all places. Several people commented that while the parade was very different from festivals in Japan, it was nice to see some of their crazy customs here in a foreign land.
4/25 Update: My shoulder is no longer red, but now it has turned a nice greenish yellow shade. Apparently I have an enormous bruise covering the entire top of my shoulder. It's huge.
4/28 Update: The greenish yellow has faded, and now I am only left with some rough skin where the mikoshi sat on my shoulder.
There were two mikoshi in this year’s parade, and we helped carry the large Taru Mikoshi, or barrel shrine. It's called that because the mikoshi is made up of a large pyramid of sake barrels on top of a wooden platform. There was definitely a sake theme to the event, with everyone wearing happi coats provided by sake companies, and plenty of drinking to go around.
We got there at 10 AM to get dressed in Happi coats and little white shorts. I chose the Japanese style, so I had to ask for help to figure out which way they went on. They then wound a big white cloth around my stomach for support. Apparently the Mikoshi is very heavy and you need it. For some reason they don't think to wind cloth around your shoulder, though, which is where everyone gets bruised and raw. We also wore little tabi shoes and sake company happi coats, which is ironic since I don't drink.
Just as we finished getting dressed, a group of about 50 pilots-in-training from JAL showed up. Apparently they have a training facility up in Napa where they spend 2 years learning how to fly. Who knew? I guess it's a pretty nice perk to be able to visit someplace like Napa Valley during your training. Anyway, they all got matching JAL happi coats. Since they were fresh off the boat, or plane, I guess, they were among the most enthusiastic participants, with innumerable cheers.
We hung around for a couple of hours and ate lunch before meeting up to carry the mikoshi. First, everyone warmed up with some sake, and then Japanese style calisthenics with much shout-counting in Japanese. We practiced lifting and shaking the mikoshi, which really is quite heavy. It's amazing no one ever drops it, but I guess that's why they had over 100 people to hold it. Of course, a lot of people dropped out as the march went on. They also didn't let really tall people carry it, because they would be crushed down to the height of normal people and get injured.
The whole parade is fairly long, but since the mikoshi is so heavy, we started out 4 blocks from the finish. We watched the whole parade go by and cheered everyone on. The mikoshi leaders kept running out into the parade to offer sake to those of age, and especially those of significantly more than sufficient age, each of whose drink was heartily cheered by the JAL contingent.
When the last of the parade had passed by, the mikoshi leaders stripped down to their fundoshi (the Japanese loincloths that Sumo players wear), climbed on top of the sake barrels, and we were underway. The leaders use a whistle to tell everyone when to raise, lower, and shake the mikoshi. Once we got the shrine moving and out onto the street I realized that the mikoshi was a lot heavier than we had thought. We bounced our way down the street until we reached the first intersection and put the mikoshi down on stands to rest.
You can see some pictures of the SF Taru Mikoshi at http://flickr.com/photos/tags/tarumikoshi/. In one of the ones from 2006 you can even see a tuft of my hair peeking out from behind the woman in the yellow happi coat.
One of the hardest parts about moving the mikoshi is that since everyone is packed in so tight holding it up, you have to step in unison otherwise everyone is stepping all over everyone else. I'm not sure if it was my fault or not, but my left tabi shoe got unfastened every single block.
I didn't see any of the crowd because I was too busy lifting and chanting "seiyo" (no idea what that means) to notice anything. Some of the other mikoshi people were filling pots with water and splashing them all over us. The march was a blur of water, shuffling feet, and the omnipresent crushing weight of the mikoshi on my shoulder. I folded up a small towel to cushion my shoulder (since my shoulder blades or something stick out like little vestigial horns), but it didn't really help. As I write this tonight my shoulder is still red and sore.
When we got down to the last block, which seemed like it took forever, we started spinning the mikoshi around and bouncing it up and down. It didn't seem like anyone had much energy left to bounce it around, especially since we shed carriers as we reached the end of the march.
After that, we set the mikoshi down at the end of the parade (4 blocks has never seemed that long!) and went to the hot springs to shower off, followed by bento and lot’s of drinking. Lot's of Japanese people living here in the US seemed to come out of the woodwork for this festival, including a large contingent from Sunnyvale, of all places. Several people commented that while the parade was very different from festivals in Japan, it was nice to see some of their crazy customs here in a foreign land.
4/25 Update: My shoulder is no longer red, but now it has turned a nice greenish yellow shade. Apparently I have an enormous bruise covering the entire top of my shoulder. It's huge.
4/28 Update: The greenish yellow has faded, and now I am only left with some rough skin where the mikoshi sat on my shoulder.
posted by Don at 7:39 AM
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