Well, I'm still here! Part of the reason for the lack of updates is that I have been busy - the new school year started in April, and I took a trip back to the States in June. Another element is that I sometimes feel I've run out of things to write about. When I first arrived in Japan, everything was new and exciting and I knew (or at least hoped) that people reading my blog from back home would want to hear about my amazing adventures. Lately, though, the things I've been doing have been mostly rehashes. Nobody wants to read sixteen consecutive updates about snowboarding. I'm still having a great time here, but things have settled down into a sort of normalcy that I personally don't find very interesting to write about, and I assume that people wouldn't find very interesting to read about.
I'll try to keep up on occasional updates from here on out - I am still doing things, and taking pictures, and having ~wacky Japan adventures~. So in that vein, here's an updates!
New JET arrivals show up at the end of July and beginning of August. Around the end of August and beginning and of September are a series of welcome parties around the island of Hokkaido, which are generally planned as camping trips.
Two weeks ago I traveled six hours southwest to attend one of the these parties, along with several other ALTs. Normally I wouldn't have traveled that far for a party like this - if I want to sit in the woods and drink I can do that a few hundred meters from my apartment. In this case, however, the festival coincided with the famous Noboribetsu Hell Festival (Noboribetsu is the name of the town).
It's pretty much all about these guys, which are ogres or demons or whatever and are fond of stealing human women and drinking. Especially drinking. As a side note, early Japanese depictions of Westerners look pretty much exactly like these guys.
Noboribetsu is situated on active volcanic ground, which means it has steam vents everywhere and smells like sulfur. For this reason, is it considered to be a top location for hotspring resorts. This smoky ambiance provides the setting for the Hell Festival.
The main event of the festival is the carrying of Mikoshi, large figures of demons, down the street. They look something like this:
And once night falls, they are carried down the street by large gangs of drunk Japanese people, who look like this:
Sometime foreigners also get involved!
Here's a bonus from our time exploring the town before the festival.
Good times.
