Last Weekend in Nishitosa

Let me preface by saying that it is INCREDIBLY HOT HERE. I'm sure I sound like a broken record--I've been complaining about this to everyone I speak to. But it really is. Remember the conventional fire safety wisdom that if your door is hot to the touch, you shouldn't go out? During the day, my door is always hot to the touch. That is how hot it is. Eeeeeuuugh.

So anyway, last Friday at 4:00 AM (!!!!! for serious.) I set out with my neighbour and the other two members of her band. The Nudy's (that's the band's name) are all from Nishitosa, so they were looking forward to seeing family and friends as well as playing a show. We got to my neighbour's house around seven or eight. The band got right to practicing, and I got right back to sleep. They woke me up to go with them to their rented practice spot around eleven, and I spent the rest of the day being a hanger-on as they practiced and got dressed up in yukata for the show. I also went swimming with my neighbour in the (thigh-deep) stream outside her house.



Around three we headed to the area where Nishitosa Festival was being set up. It was a big lawn belonging to some kind of big building, right on the Shimanto River. A nice place for a party! It was the first Nishitosa Festival in ten years. There were several performanced lined up--some kindergarden students did a Yosakoi dance (not very skillful, but incredibly cute) and a local cultural group did some amazing drumming. Then there was some nice acoustic background music, followed by a short set from The Nudy's. Unfortunately, there was a schedule problem and they got abbreviated into only a couple of songs--after that, there was a live radio show. I would have liked to hear the girls play longer, and their friends and family definitely agreed!

Later, there was a bon-odori, a big circle dance. There's a special Nishitosa dance that has been danced for years and years(I forget how many, but a lot). I joined in.... much to my later regret, because a photographer from a PREFECTURE-WIDE newspaper snapped a photo of me dancing, and a couple of days later, there I was in full living colour. When I first saw it in Nishitosa, I didn't mind, because I figured it was local... but since I've returned to Kochi all of my students have been waving newspaper clippings at me. I will not post a copy here, because my dignity is already bruised enough! Hmph! Anyway, we stayed at the festival until it ended, and helped to clean up and take down the tents.

The next day, we went out for breakfast with my neighbour's father and older sister, and a former member of the band. It was nice to see her dad again especially--he played the father in The Face of Jizo when we put it on here in May. After that, the older sister very kindly gave me a lift to the Shimanto Gakusha, a kind of adventure-hotel-resort-hostel-thing. It's in a building which used to be a school, right on the bank of the Shimanto River.

And then I spent the weekend there, working for room and board, which I will write about in another post another day!