fireworks
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
As I write this, I'm sitting on the "limited express" train bound for Yokohama. i've just eaten a natto roll, and tried a couple of sips of one of the many Gatorade-like drinks that are on the market here. Not "Pocari Sweat", a less-imaginatively-named competitor.
I am hungover, again, but the ash is finally out of my hair and the stench of sulphur is out of my nostrils.
We went to a fireworks competition that was held in Asakusa last night. Someone arranged that a group of eight of us would meet with about 150 others at a baseball field that had been covered in matts. Filling out the rest of the field were several thousand orderly Japanese partiers, noisy but happily packed together in desities that would of course be impossible in touchy Canada. We st with a gaggle of reticent Brits and a number of Japanese women dressed in the traditional style (a kimono-like dress called a Yukata that's less formal than a full-on kimono).
We'd stopped to collect a lot of the various foods for sale in the deli supermarket adjacent to the Asakusa station, and arrived lagen down with food and drinks. We had sesame check and weiners on skewers and octopus balls and edamame and more. Not that there wasn't already a lot to be had. There wer ebottle of sochu and many more cans of teh shu-hi we'd already picked up. And there were rice balls and skewers with liver and checken and other meats.
And there were more bottles of sochu. And bottles of wine. And cans and cans of beer.
When the fireworks began, we were so close to the actin that there was scarcely any lag in the sounds that accompanied the sights. The bangs, I mean.
There was a gentle wind that blew in our direction, and it drove the smoke towards us. With the sky a haze of back-lit smoke, I noticed something black falling towards us. When it hit us, it turned out to be the ash and fragments of charred cardboard from the casings of the actual fireworks.
By the end of the night were were all sooty and gritty. And hammered, of course. Which I'm learning that the Japanese do quite well - public drunkeness, I mean. They're extremely well behaved, even when liquored up. No violence or vandalism or rowdyness, just group chanting and general 'go team' kind of stuff.
Some of our neighbours started up chanting and clapping when the fireworks were done, so I joined in. Maree, one of the women from Citi explained that it was a traditional thing done for morale and enjoyment, and that the people doing so were "traditional people" (of which she approved, it seemed). The neighbours had noticed my clapping along, so they got me to my feet to take part in the trilled "r-r-r-r-r-uuu" calls and of course to polish off whatever booze was at hand (someone's sochu, naturally - I have no idea how sake brandy ever got so popular but I'm not complaining).
The fellow leading the gang wound up punching his name and number into my cell phone, so now I have a new contact in the city.
When the lights came on, there was more Japanese stuff to delight in (if by now in a thoroughly wobbly fashion). everyone leapt to their feet and started packing up. One of our new friends, having learned that there were Canadians and English(wo)men among us, cheered on "team international". In surprisingly little time, our area was cleaned up.
I don't recall the rest of the evening with perfect clarity, but we floundered from one spot to another after that (I'm starting to confuse different nights on the town, which probably shouldn't surprise me). It didn't become a terribly late night, but it was all I could do to get home under my own steam when it all wound down.