The Epic Fish Battle of Iburihashi

This post will be pretty picture-centric, as the story was similar to Wajima but the details changed.

After working Wednesday and Thursday, I planned to go south about 45 minutes on the train to Iburihashi with a bunch of JETs to see their one-night fish festival. It's a much smaller festival than Wajima, but much beloved by veteran JETs who've gone in previous years.

Quick aside: on Wednesday night I said goodbye to my predecessor, Simon. He was in my position for 3 years and is now moving to Seitama (near Tokyo) to work as a full English teacher in a British English school. He's 42 and from Liverpool, so our kids are going to have some adjusting to do--actually some of them have been calling me Simon, strangely enough. Perhaps they think every gaijin man is named Simon....

In any case, I can't thank him enough for all he's done for me in the past few weeks. I would have been lost without the help.


The first thing I noticed about Iburihashi was that it was tiny and absolutely silent near the train station.

I quickly realized that this was because probably the entire town was out at the festival. It was a much more intimate set up, with only two main floats and always one clear focus of action.

The progression of the festival was strikingly similar to Wajima, in that large groups of people carried something around on their shoulders chanting and then burned something at the end. However, this was a bit more focused. There were two massive fish floats, manned by a red team and a yellow team, as well as a mini float carried by kids off to the side. After a parade through the streets to the train station, the red and yellow fish engaged in a symbolic battle (although many of us were hoping for full-on ramming speed) and the loser was then carried to a bonfire at a shrine and immolated.

The red team included four JETs from the area, another example of amazing willingness to involve foreigners in a traditional festival

The younger, gaudier, and larger yellow team

These stops at the beer cart would prove to be devastating to the yellow team...

The fight is on!

After some of the fighting, there was a break for a performance by the children. You can see their fish off to the right. They performed a skit of the legend that inspires the festival, but it was difficult to understand for an outsider.

A sort of hip-hop/traditional dance form that's become popular in Japan, although I'm forgetting the name right now.

I wasn't really sure on the criteria by which the winner was determined, but I'm assuming it's some combination of speed, fluidity, and cool fish float moves. In any case, the underdog red team won! This was definitely partially because the younger yellow team got noticeably rip-roaring drunk. If you haven't ever seen a 40-foot fish sway around in the street like a wasted college guy, I highly recommend it.

The yellow team marches to the sacrifice.

Right before the final push.

One of the iconic images of our time...

Me and Colin with two completely random guys. Seriously, we met them a half second before this picture was taken.

The whole experience was fantastic again, but in a very different way, as it was so small and contained. I spent the night at a fellow JET's apartment and headed home in the morning. Along the train ride, I saw this somewhat surreal sight:

I'll have to go investigate at some point.

Check the video post that follows this one for videos of Wajima and Iburihashi!

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Festival Videos

The Kiriko staging area in Wajima

Approaching the first tower

Parade to the station in Iburihashi

Fighting in front of the station

Almost in the fire

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Mad as a Box of Frogs

Over the weekend, I got a supplemental course (I've already taken the intro classes) in hilarious British slang from my friend Sarah Kelly. The title of the post comes from that and refers to both the way my weekend trip to Wajima went and to how you'll feel after getting through a rather mammoth post.

On Sunday, I met some other JETs at the train station/bus depot to catch the highway bus up to Wajima at 6:30. The trip took about 2.5 hours, so once out we quickly dropped our stuff off and went towards the sound of taiko drumming.


The Wajima Taisai festival happens every year near the end of August, and entails huge crowds gathering to watch kiriko (tall lantern towers) carried in parades around the city to singing and drumming.




A couple Wajima JETs had met locals who invited them to join their kiriko team, so we went to the kiriko staging area to meet up. The whole atmosphere of the festival completely belies the reserved daily attitude of the Japanese I have observed. Everyone was dancing, shouting, cheering.

Adam all ready to carry the kiriko.

This lazy guy got a free ride. Make him carry too!

We followed Adam and Brian's kiriko as it wound slowly through the crowded streets towards a prearranged meeting point. As our group had attached itself to one particular kiriko, the Japanese men began to invite us to carry the lantern, even though we were in regular street clothes. I can't admire enough the open attitude they had towards clumsy foreigners joining in their traditional festival. It seemed that if we were willing to experience the culture, they were more than happy to include us--something I don't know that I would expect from many cultures.



Soon I was asked to shoulder part of the kiriko, which I would like to quickly assert is not a light structure. After two nights of intermitent carrying at the festival, my shoulders and neck are aching. In addition to carrying the kiriko, every so often in the marching song the carriers thrust the lantern up, yelling "So desu!" (I think that's what we were saying, which translates more or less to "Yeah it is!". I think. I need to learn more Japanese.)

Sunday night when I grabbed a spot under the kiriko, however, we happened to be just at the point where everyone breaks into a 50-yard run towards the final meeting point. I'm getting short of breath just typing about it.

Immediately after the sprint and the resulting knee-high tear in my pants.

Once at the central point, the kiriko teams gather around a straw torch/tower, which is lit on fire. On top of the straw tower are bamboo poles with pieces of paper on them. As the tower falls, young men rush into the resulting bonfire (really) and try to grab the bamboo poles to ensure good luck for them and their team.


This is where things got a bit crazy. The tower was lit on fire, but something went wrong and a large portion of it fell down early, landing on several people and setting them on fire. The flames were put out pretty quickly, and there were ambulances on hand, but it was unnerving to see the huge crowd break and run away from a suddenly very dangerous scene.

Adam went into the fire with some of the guys to find the bamboo, and while they got a pole, Adam got punched in the back of the head...this is a weirdly vicious side of the culture I wasn't really expecting.

And then came the rain. It sheeted down so quickly that most people were immediately soaked and then it didn't matter anymore, so we just stood out in the warm summer rain. Eventually we picked up the kiriko and continued on to a second torch tower, where it stopped raining and the burning went much more smoothly; no people were lit on fire. Sheesh.



Along the way some of us met Japanese university students from all over the country who had come just to study the festival. It was a whirlwind of a night, but refreshing to see the Japanese people in another light.

University students are, evidently, the same the world round.

The next day (Monday), we wandered around Wajima for a while, exploring back alleys, adjacent farmland, and then Adam took a few of us in his car to check out the coastal sights. One was Senmaida (Thousand Rice Paddies), and we took some time to hang out at the ocean before continuing to Window Rock. This was my first real taste of the inaka (rural areas), and it couldn't have been more gorgeous.

A kiriko team practices their taiko drumming before the festival.

On a hill southwest of the city.

Constructing another tower.

Martine stands with a man prepping for the festival. I'll be honest that I don't know why he was dressed like that. The festival has roots in the rice harvest and is a general celebration, but I don't know much more than that.

Senmaida (A thousand...?)

Sarah on the sea wall. Madder than a box of frogs, that one, 24/7

Gateway to a temple and shrine we stopped at on the way.

Monday night at the festival was more of the same, with less people burning and less rain. If anything, though, the crowd was even wilder. It took place in a different area of the city, and I heard that every night of the four night festival celebrates a different region around Wajima. At some points in the parade, the kiriko teams whipped their kirikos in circles as fast as they could. It was breathtaking and more than a little alarming as some carriers were thrown away from the kiriko by the force. The Saint of Drunken Revelry was working overtime, as more than a couple kirikos seemed at the brink of tipping into the crowd.

It was Kaitlyn's 24th birthday at midnight, so she found some high school girls to celebrate with.

Monday night I got a ride even deeper into the inaka to stay with another friend who had a guitar she wanted to give away. Tuesday morning and afternoon was filled with car and bus rides through rolling hills, smooth rice paddies, and deep roadside rivers.

A stop for gelatto (really) in the middle of nowhere.

Tomorrow it's back to work for a couple days, and then Thursday night I'll head down south to another festival. It's a rough life, I know, but someone's gotta live it.


PS--I have a few videos of the festival which I will try to upload and post in the next day or two.

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