Patrick: Agata Matsuri

This is hot off the press so to speak though I won't be able to post it until morning. I just got back from a night festival, the Agata Matsuri (県祭り) held annually on the 5th of June in Uji. It is Uji's largest festival and people of all ages showed up to walk the crowded streets and alleys lined with shops. It was in general much better than the Dontaku Matsuri that we attended in Hakata during Golden Week even though Dontaku is one of the major festivals in the country. The atmosphere was much more lively, the streets full of young people, and the variety of shops was absolutely stunning. Actually it felt a lot like walking through a night market in Taiwan. The festival started at 6pm and goes until midnight. At midnight the main ceremony occurs privately inside the Agata shrine. I went with my host dad around 8:30 pm. Apparently the demographics differ throughout the night. During the early hours from 6pm to 8pm, families with small children dominate the streets. Then come the middle schoolers who must get home before curfew. The high schoolers are next. And the college students after that. My host brother said that many of the shops are sponsored by the Yakuza so around 10pm, they start showing up to collect tribute. I thought that was a particularly funny yet scary comment. The irony is that the Yakuza activities are completely legal. The police after all, are stationed at the Uji bridge keeping the peace. Although I don't know how effective they are if the Yakuza were really to come out in numbers…

I was impressed with all the girls who came out in their yukatas. The older girls, especially the ones with bleach-destroyed hair, seemed to prefer short nonexistent shorts and wispy blouses but with so many people, yukatas were definitely not rare. There were also girls in school uniforms and such as well. With people all around, it seemed everywhere I looked, the girls were all so cute. I think my eyes tended to gloss over the ones that had too much make-up on or the ones that looked too slutty to even admire. The guys on the other hand traveled in packs. They were usually in school uniforms or really tight clothes. They tended to sport some really ridiculous hairdos that couldn't possibly be attractive. It makes me wonder what it would be like walking along the streets with Johnny. I think we'd have a self-replenishing shield of girls surrounding us like phospholipids in water.

My host brother mentioned that Uji has the most young people among all the districts of Kyoto. Because the parents tended to be young and lax with their kids, many of the youths in Uji end up being petty thieves and drop-outs. During the night, you can see 15-year-olds without licenses riding their stolen motorcycles at breathtaking speeds down the narrow streets. I saw a few the other night coming back late. Many of them were probably at the festival tonight. Of course not all the young people at the festival were delinquents. But I can't say that most of them were the types of people were used to seeing around Stanford. Some of the girls were so obnoxious, I couldn't believe that they were Japanese. I guess even in Japan there are all types of people.

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