We took a train from Hirakata over to Kyobashi and then over to the JR line (another train line, we use Keihan mostly) and took that to Taisho and a bus from there to the park where this festival was being held. Now, they called it a "park" but it was... a large open space made of dirt. Little bit of a let down, but the festival was pretty neat. I don't know what ESA means, but it was an Okinawan festival showing off music (there was a HUGE stage), food (more on that later), clothes, and dancing. Since Okinawa is a little island very far away from the main Japanese islands normally people don't get to see this stuff so they have a huge festival. The main reason we were on this trek was that it was Maria's birthday, we wanted to do something special and so we fumbled around for a week not knowing what the hell we were going to do and somehow ended up at the festival. It was great because at 12:01am they had her open all her presents and the next day they pinned a "Birthday Princess" sash on her and didn't tell her a thing about where we were going until we got to the festival (hence why the whole dirt thing wasn't so spiffy) . We were a little bit of an attraction because Erica kept her hair up (in a mohawk) and there were A LOT of pictures, plus we were outside the city so there weren't that many gaijin (foreign) people around. We didn't get down to the shop area, but we hit the food tents right off the bat since it was past noon and no one had eatten. Here's what I ate:
The guy told me it was a "hot dog" and the other thing is an omlette with Okinawan sausage in it. When I bit into it I realized the "hot dog" was more of a "pork dumpling shaped like a hotdog", still very yummy. The food was a little expensive and it was hard to find a place to sit. Drew almost didn't get anything to eat because everything was $3 or so, but we tried to explain to her that it was like stadium food. Erica finally found something vegan (phew). Meanwhile Maria got those octopus balls that plague me and Nadia got some seaweed held together by some tempra (which is like dough and when it's fried it's tempura). I didn't have any, but Nadia said hers, "tasted like the ocean". That's a pretty good description of a lot of things. Where we sat was behind the tents with the food in these cement bleachers. The problem was that there were so many people we couldn't find the stairs to get up there, so being the graceful one I am I just hopped up, only to rip my shorts right open. Smooth. Everyone hopped up with no problem, but I was still left with this gaping hole. Thankfully Maria lent me a safety pin from her sash to fix my little problem and we all pretty much agreed everyone would be too busy looking at Erica's hair that my hole wasn't going to be an item of interest. Note: today I finally sewed them back together, it looks really spiffy so now I have shorts again!
We hung around the festival for a bit, watching the drummers, having peolple gawk at Erica, getting our picture taken by a million different people. One of which included a friend of the professor (who started this little trip, we saw him too) who was in her full kimono and loved us so she got a million pictures of us and us as a group. What was really cute was this little girl who asked Maria what her sash said and Maria (being level 4 Japanese) told her that it was her birthday. After she heard this the little girl ran off and came back a few minutes later with a can of green tea for Maria, telling her "happy birthday!". She followed us around the festival for a long time and she was the sweetest thing ever.
Maria and I were both taken with how many of the kids at the festival were just sitting there making sandcastles in the dirt. I was trying to get a picture of them when Maria remarked that she couldn't believe that years ago in Spain she did the same thing, just like I did back home in the States. It was cool to see that kids everywhere play in the dirt, I'm sure that's not life-altering for all of you, but it was cool.
Once it started to rain we realized there wasn't much else to see and Erica's hair would melt if we stayed out in the rain much longer, so we ran over to the 100 yen (dollar) store across the street and then headed out to catch the bus back to Osaka. We found our way to Namba and wandered around that mall I had fun going through the week before when I couldn't meet up with my friends at Yodabashi Station. We were doing okay until Drew had a panic attack due to the crowds and we had to leave the busy mall area. We were getting tired at this point (it was around 5pm or so) so we took Maria to the electronics store where she when inside with Nadia to get somethings while we sat on the steps outside (there was a huge over hang, so we weren't blocking the door. We were chatting about random things when, yep you probably didn't guess, adventure found us once again.
This time it appeared in the form of a middle aged (probably late 40's-50's) man who was walking over to us. This didn't seem weird at first, since a lot of Japanese people just walk up to us to practice English, say hi, etc. but this guy was walking and didn't respond to any of our reponses of, "How can we help you?" "Hello?" or "Konnichiwa? Shit is it Konbanwa yet?" Nothing. He just kept walking. Now what we thought would stop him was this little fence in front of us made out of those big orange cones and some plastic bars going between them. Yeah, it didn't. He walked through it and made a lunge for Tracy. Erica, who had been the one attacked early (there, I said it, you know who the friend was, gasp) she reacted immediately while the rest of us were just in plain shock. She grabed his wrist with her nails and shoved it away yelling, "DAME HENTAI" which should me don't you pervert, although I would've gone with Chikan and not Hentai, but I don't really know. Tracy was to my left and Erica to my right so I was just sitting there in total confusion until I realized Erica's very obvious attempt at getting him to go away didn't work. He climbed over the fence. At this point I jumped up and ran over to the door near the entrance to the store that had a security guard in it and just said, "Tasukete!" (help). He nodded and got on the phone, but at this point I whipped around to see what the hell was happening. I'd forgotten my bag, but thankfully Erica grabbed it and the shocked Tracy and had run over to the opening of the store. Now, this was a big over hang we were under with two HUGE pillars holding it up. I was behind one with the guard and they were behind another, nothing stopped this guy. He followed them around and around and around the pole. We were all yelling at him and he wasn't going too fast so we'd get faraway thinking he'd stop and then he'd see us and sluggishly stumble over. He didn't say a thing, he made some sort of grunting noise and dragged his feet as he walked. Erica even said she didn't think he opened his eyes the whole time. This is why the first time he went for Tracy all I could think of was Resident Evil (Zombie video game, for those who don't know) and my inner monolouge went a little something like, "Shit, do I have enough magnum bullets left? Wait, this is a standard zombie not a crimson head so I should go with pistol." then I hopped up and entered reality again. Erica had armed herself with an umbrella and as she was running with the others trying to get away she'd hit him everytime he got close. Nothing phased him, but eventually we got all of us together and when the guard FINALLY walked up to him he fell over and pretended he couldn't get up. We BOLTED for the door and stood shaking inside the electronics store waiting for Maria and Nadia.
What really pissed me off about this whole thing wasn't that this guy did this, he was either drunk or high of something, or just crazy, but was everyone elses reaction to it. There was a guard there, a group of people doing some sales outside the store and other passersby and NO ONE did a thing. One guy when over and said, you shouldn't do this, but nothing else. No one stopped him, yelled, raised an alarm or helped us. I know it was sudden and probably hysterical to watch the gaijin get chased by the drunken old man, but what the hell, you're a security guard, security has been breached, pepper spray the bastard! What that guard did do was call the police, who did show up rather quickly. When we left the store we saw they'd taken the guy and sat him down and were kind of laughing at him. They helped him up and took him away, but the general consenus was that no one took this seriously and they were just going to get him home and let him off. I don't know if this was the case, but it felt that way and we couldn't shake the crazy shock and frusterated feeling all day. Since her previous attack Erica carries a cute Japanese box cutter with her, she almost used it here, but we would've been in a world of more trouble for that. Her dad wants her to get a tazer and doesn't even know about this event because, well he'd flip out and get her one.
Japan is really very safe and it was scary for all of us to have this randomly happen. I mean it's hysterical on some levels and bothersome on others. We were in a big place with a lot of people and were safe. No worries. Though this did put a damper on the day as did the rain and the dirt pit, but Maria loved everything else about her big day. We got some food at a cafe and realized there wasn't much we could do that didn't involve big crowds, plus we were exhausted so we went back to the dorms. Marika arrived at the dorms with in a few minutes of us getting there and we gave Maria the rest of her presents and ate the cake Marika bought, which was quite yummy. Then I was kicked out at 9:59pm by Okaasan (their dorm mother) and got home at a normal hour.
That was Sunday. Now it's the following Saturday and I'm the only one on campus and should probably leave before they close the gates on me. ;)
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