Tamana Tawara Festival (Sept 23-24)

I left early in the morning for Kumamoto where I was met by Erica at the port. It felt like such a long time since we'd last gotten together!! From there, we picked up Tamita (also a JET) and after grabbing a quick bite to eat, we headed downtown where the Tamana Tawara Festival was going to take place.

The day began with a parade leading to the main street where we would soon be racing.

Along the way, music was playing and people were dancing. The upbeat atmosphere was contagious, we tried our hand at the dances, a couple of which had been performed at my school's Sports Festival!

Eventually, we reached the main road where the races would be taking place. The main event of this festival is the pulling of a tawara from one end of the street to the other.

There were children, women and men's teams. We were part of the florist shop's team, where many of Erica's eikaiwa (English conversation classes) students work. Each team was timed, and the winning team was announced in the early evening.

A short while before the race, we gathered for a bit of strategy talk. One of the members used a can, some string and diagrams to demonstrate where we start, where to run to, which rope we need to pull (ie our position) and how to correct the direction we're going in should we start veering too much to one side.

As our turn to compete neared, we started feeling a little bit nervous..how heavy is this tawara thing? How easily does it steer off course??

Here we are pumping ourselves up before the race. We will gambarimasu!

It was a fun experience, I'm sure very entertaining for the audience!

Once the races were over...

Later in the afternoon, more dances were performed.

Eventually the results were announced. Unfortunately, we didn't do too well....came in 11th out of 15 teams!! But it was lots of fun, and now we know what to expect for next year!

Maki (one of the team members) and I share the exact same birthday: same year, same month..and same day!! Erica prepared some deliciiiiouus brownies to celebrate, which we indulged in at the party later in the evening.

As it started to get dark, they started to prepare for another type of dance. What seemed like hundreds of ladies in yukattas formed a large circle and started to do a very simple, but graceful dance using fans.

It didn't look too hard, so we decided to join in!

Once the festival was over, and everyone had finished helping clean up, we went over to Miwako's place for a quick change before heading to the enkai (party) at a local sushi restaurant.

At the enkai:

Before heading home, we stopped to get a late night coffee.

From left to right: Hitomi, Erica, me, Maki, Miwako and Fushimi. We had a lot of fun together..we laughed so much I feel like I got more exercise from all the laughing than the actual pulling of the hay!