Unforgettable Season

You know, when I was in Australia the weather was lovely! Beautiful blue skies, sunny days and perfect temperatures in that I had the choice between shorts or pants - it all really hit the spot. Then I came back to Japan which is supposedly spring and it was COLD! I put off wearing thermals for the first few days because IT WAS THE PRINCIPLE! Why should I be wearing thermals in SPRING?! Needless to say the weather has been on and off the past few days/weeks and further needless to say is that the Japanese weather forecast has been wrong almost every single time.
But what grinds my gears is that Friday night it actually snowed. It SNOWED in SPRING!
Snow aside, the cherry blossoms have... blossomed... so everything has become about 200% more beautiful. These tree's are pretty much everywhere but you wouldn't know it until around this time ever year when they burst forth with a mass of these beautiful flowers. It was quite a site to see the cherry blossoms against snowfall. I don't think that it happens very often. I didn't take any pictures of that though because I've been quite busy the past few days!

(above; a seemingly normal park TRANSFORMED by cherry blossoms)

Busy practicing for the festival that was this weekend! For those of you not in the know I've been practicing taiko (japanese drumming) for the past few weeks and today I performed with lots of the peeps I've been practicing with. Maybe some of you remember when I first moved into my apartment there was a festival happening outside? Well it's the same festival! What it entails is each town within the greater city of Otawara has a float/portable shrine. Inside these floats people play the taiko as it gets pulled around the city. It's a big festival with 9 floats in total, heaps of food stalls and huge community participation. This year I was one of the drummers!

(above; the float I played in / hung around)

So on both Saturday and Sunday I was in the whole Japanese get-up and followed, played and otherwise lingered around the town/float I was associated with. Which turned out to be a lot of fun in case any of you were wondering. The biggest shame is that I've only been practicing for a short time and I won't be here for the next festival so I wasn't able to play to my full potential. I was still pretty good though I think! It was really nice to be a part of the group and do things like cheering along with the players, eating the home cooked lunches, drinking the free beer and so on. In some ways I think a white person participating in such a Japanese event is probably a bit odd (I did get my fair share of surprised stares) but the community were all very welcoming.

(above; My taiko teacher and I)

The festival culminated at night with all of the lantern lit floats closing in to form a circle full of people jumping, screaming and having a good time while the drummers went nuts and played as fast and as loud as they could. It was quite an experience I tell you! I feel very lucky to have been a part of it and to have had the experiences that I had. Not many foreigners can do stuff like this y'know!
Otherwise it's back to school as usual. I don't think any of my students saw me play as my town is a little far away from them so maybe I'll keep this as my little secret ;)



P.S. Brendan comes next week!