So from this past Thurs, Oct. 15 til early this morning the taiko drums were heard everywhere in my town of Saijo, in Shikoku. Thursday night at around 10 pm was when things really started picking up, from my balcony I spotted the first danjiri, or portable mini shrine, from my apartment balcony. That was interesting--from about the height of the top of it, it just appeared like a strange floating bunch of jellyfish wandering through the darkness to a strange drumbeat. But, it did give me pride in my neighborhood! Basically, the concept behind the portable shrines--from what I can muster--is that for this festival, the gods enter the mini shrines once they are blessed at the big shrine near the river and from there they wander around town together and stop at certain places along the way, all the way being pushed along on wheels or carried by the men of the neighborhood they represent. In my town there are 77 neighborhoods (they're more like subdivisions..and yes, I've been trying to picture in my head what the one for Broadmoor would look like if Louisiana had this festival..) so there are 77 of the mini portable shrines being carried around from about 25 or 30- 50 or 60 (mostly) men each. So, thats the jist. They look like this, and in the middle under the curtains is the taiko drum. So, this all starts about midnight on Thursday, when they all start heading out together along the main roads to the shrine by the river.
Jennifer and I were lucky enough to come across a group of old and young men and women alike that adopted us into their raucous group. They chatted us up and we wound up walking along with them over the bridge after many of the other shrines.. our 'adopted neighborhood shrine' was about midway between the group of mini shrines, so we followed them across the river, where there was a bit of traffic as the mini shrines were waiting to go into the Big shrine. We got impatient, so we wandered ahead and watched as some of the others were being blessed. By this time it was the wee hours of the morning, wee enough that after seeing the blessing of the small shrines, I decided that the threshold of a side building at the big shrine looked like a comfortable enough place to pass some time and took a nice solid 3 hr nap in front of the building's altar. (Don't worry, I had no valuables and it was pretty common--there were folks passed out just about everywhere near the shrine!) I woke up right after sunrise and hiked it from there back to my apartment, to sleep for real. It was a pretty enough walk back, but I definitely left after all the mini shrines had gone! 
So, sleeping done, took care of some stuff around the house before heading out again to become a night owl! Left around the same time, arriving with the folks at the shrine. Brought a bottle of sake this time, which everyone signed (and I took back with me as a souvenir of my first festival, of course!) So, walking around town again, I met up with a couple of girls my age with the same mini-shrine, then we all walked together with the mini-shrine, helping to push a little along the way to a big shrine. Along the way people lined the road, it felt like a parade with floats...except, instead of the tractor, just
everyone gettin' out back n pushin', the old fashioned way...So, finally we get to the shrine, n me and the girls go to search for snacks..we get some at a stall, and munch..chocolate covered bananas! Yumm! Then, we go off with another friend, a male coworker of mine, to find a famous seafood dish we thought was for sale at the food
stalls, but instead...we found a fight, blossoming near one of the food stalls, with gangsters! Yikes! so we backed away slowly...headed back to our mini shrine. There was a two hour break (at this point it was 3 or 4 in the morning) and just hung out and talked..there were guys sleeping or passed out drunk anywhere you looked! I just stayed up and talked and ate some of the food they had. Finally, we started to roll out..only, this time no rolling! They took out the wheels and all the guys shouldered the weight themselves! It was intense..I just pushed. No shouldering for me! But, we all sang.. I pretty much knew the words by heart by the time the sun rose, even though I had no idea what they meant! The lanterns came off and we marched along to the main road, in front of the high school, where we were headed..
well, finally the day got brighter and 3 miles later, we arrived at our destination, in broad daylight on the main drag, where all the mini shrines had lined up. (Here's me with my ridiculous cap pretending to be a guy so I can hop into the festival...hehehe...)
Our mission (should we
choose to accept it!) was to meander along the road, then walk over the moat to where the castle used to be (now its the high school..strange, right?!) bounce up and down and sing, and then go park our shrine! Along the way we ran into other strange shrines, as well as the gold coin-i prefer to call it blinged out-shrine for the gods that was the focus of the whole festival. So, we get to the high school, everyone lifts our shrine....and it falls! Ah well, everyone's pretty worn out. Apparently it's not a rare occurence..at least everyone was ok! So we move on, park the thing, and get some breakfast--hooray sushi and soup! At that point I had been awake for about 16 hours so I was like.. I'm gonna go take a nap! And what a beautiful nap it was!! Then, I woke up again for the end of the festival, where, that night, we lined up all the shrines along the levee on the side of the river, while a few of them went down into the river. At that point, the legends say the gods return to the big shrine they came from. So, return they did, and then I returned home to my apartment for a full night's sleep..(and I hope so did these guys, that I caught sleeping in the middle of the day!!)
