Local Family Festivals and Food

So a quick correction. Going back through the photos dates, apparently the student demos were this weekend on the 10th, not on the 3rd like I thought. Anyways....

On 10/11 I was invited to the house of one of my JTE (Japanese English Teacher, the people I assist in class) for a local festival. In rural parts of Japan towns will have yearly festivals, usually in spring or the fall, which encourages families to get together and celebrate local traditions. My JTE, Fujiwara-sensei, invited me to her family get-together to give me an opportunity to experience a uniquely japanese cultural event. We went with her husband to her families house, buried in the rural mountains south of Tottori City. There we met her mother and her grandmother, as well as her brother, sister-in-law, and her three nieces. Everyone apart from Fujiwara-sensei live in the family house, which is rather common in Japan with the exception of the big cities. Generally speaking the eldest son is charged with caring for their parents, so they will often live with their parents their whole lives and support them financially after they retire.

With this large gathering, there was an equally large feast prepared. What you see here is pretty much the equivalent of a thanksgiving meal in Japan. And yes, it was all delicious. A few other extended family members came to the house, and together we stuffed our faces for over an hour, yet it seemed we hardly made a dent in the smorgasbord of food.

After lunch we waiting for a dragon dance to come to our door. The tradition of this town's festival entailed a dragon going from house to house and dancing for the families. The dragon's bite children as well for good luck, but my JTE's nieces were scared of it, so they ran and hid during the performance. I myself did get bit, so hopefully good fortune will keep coming my way.

Props to the performers by the way, they had been performing since dawn (it was the early afternoon by the time they reached my JTE's house). And after each  performance, the households offer them alcohol and food. So not only were these people voluntarily dancing and playing music for hours, they were doing so drunk and stuffed.  

After the performance we went to the local park/shrine right across from the house, where little kids were sumo wrestling for prizes and neighbors were chatting.

I am really glad I was able take part in this cultural activity. It is definitely not something I could have experienced as a tourist traversing the country on my own. Experiences like this were only available to me thanks to the JET programme.  I am glad I opted to work in Japan, not just make a quick visit.

But my weekend was not over! Monday was a national holiday, so I met up with Tim and Maria in Yonago. 

We spent the morning playing around with Tim's camera, an then that afternoon we headed up Mt. Daisen for Burger Festa. As the name implies, it was a huge gathering of burger restaurants from around the area serving their own unique burgers for the crowds to try and vote on. Serving small burger halves, I was able to try a few different creative culinary concoctions. It was tough to say which was my favorite, since they were all quite unique.