Aizu Shinmei Jinja Festival

Two nights a week for the past three months, I've been attending a Japanese class held at the University. The lecturer, Aoyama-sensei, was a retiree living in the city who volunteers at the Aizuwakamatsu International Association (AWIA), and the University asked him and a few other teachers to come teach classes to the graduate students and faculty.

Yesterday was our last class, which was the same day as the Shinmei Jinja Festival. There's a small temple nestled away behind the tall commercial buildings on Shinmeidoori, aka National Route 118, aka Aizuwakamatsu's "Main Street." The city was making a big deal of it; they were closing off the road to vehicular traffic so that people could come, and there were going to be vendors selling wares and booze for cheap. Therefore, the last lesson for the class would be about shrine etiquette. We learned about how to properly wash our hands at the purification fountain, which is called 禊 (misogi), and how to make an offering and "pray" (any other atheists reading this blog?) at the temple itself.

After class, we all met up at the Washington Hotel, travelled to City Hall to take advantage of the free nearby parking, and then walked to the festival, which was already well underway. There was a long line of all sorts of people: retirees, families, freshly liberated salarymen and OLs, students, etc. We did the misogi and the offerings, and I tried to get video footage of both, although the lighting sucked, and the Olfi doesn't come with any flash features.

We took some pictures near the 神輿 (mikoshi, or Shinto deity transportation vessel) and took a brief stroll along the street to check out the vendors. Aoyama-sensei wanted to leave at this point and go to dinner as planned, but then I noticed various people in festival garb crowding around the mikoshi. He inquired with one of the helpers, and it turned out that they were about to have another procession with it. Therefore, we decided to stick around and watch it before dinner.

The mikoshi

One of my classmates, Chen

Aoyama-sensei, trying not to throw out his back

As we were waiting, I felt a few slight taps on my right knuckle bone. I turned a looked down to see this little boy staring back up at me with sheepish awe, who then said 「ハロー」to me. I said hello back, and then he said 「ハロー」once more, this time a bit weaker, before turning around and heading back to his family. I've been in Japan for about 17 months now, and that's the first time that that's happened to me.

We watched the mikoshi being hoisted down to the traffic blockade and then headed out to dinner at a nearby izakaya. I got to have a very fun experience in Aizu that I otherwise would not have known about. (The festival was not advertised in the city bulletin, so I would've had no other way of knowing about it had Aoyama-sensei not told us.) There will be other festivals in Aizu this month, and I intend to go to those as well. I'll keep you all in the loop as to how those go.

-wp