This past weekend I helped out at my town's Tonden Furusato Matsuri, celebrating the farmer-soldiers who moved out to this part of the island and settled here many years ago. Nowadays it's celebrated with giant skip rope competitions, giant tug o' war competitions, giant pools where kids can fish for trout, a giant BBQ, and a giant Bingo competition. The whole town came out, teams competed, tears were shed and a good time was had by all.

As part of the yakuba (townhall) I was volunteered to help out with the festivities, mainly by helping to carry things around and then standing around the judge's booth and looking pretty. I also partook in the giant skip rope competition with the highschool teacher's team where we had five people going at once. The points were awarded for each successful jump multiplied by the number of people jumping. Unfortunately, we lost to the machine-like junior high volleyball team who managed to get over 1000 points. I'm pretty sure they're forced to train for hours at a time because I don't know how they didn't collapse from pain due to all their jumping.

After that was the tug o' war competition which I didn't compete in but would've loved to. They were made up of teams of 10-14 people from different businesses and schools. Once that finished they brought out a massive rope (literally a rope the thickness of a tennis ball and 300 meters long) and pitted one half of the town against the other. There were over 100 people pulling from each side so I decided to jump in on the side closest to me. Unfortunately (again), I picked the side that lost! When this was over everyone lined up to help put away the rope and then gave us each a consolation prize. They were sweat towels (very useful in hot weather when your sweating like a pig) with the town logo, the festival name on it and... the kanji for "Loser" printed on it! WTF? They gave the winning side towels that said "Winner" and our side the "Loser" towels. I guess it's their way of saying "Better luck next year"?.. Maybe? At least now whenever I use the towel everyone will know which side of the tug o' war I was on.

One of the other things that happened was the giant Bingo competition near the end of the festival. It was amazing. There was a voucher on the festival flyer that everyone in town received in their mailbox that they had to redeem for a bingo card. I had forgotten mine so my supervisor kindly gave me his. A huge tent was filled to the brim with random stuff: bags of juice, boxes of food, bags of rice, kleenex boxes and a bunch of other random boxes and bags (that I don't know what they were because I couldn't read the kanji..) Anyways, they set up a huge bingo board and called out the numbers, just like normal bingo, and had a pathway roped off leading to the tent so whenever someone got a bingo they had their card checked and then lined up to collect their prize. Obviously you want to get a bingo quickly because the best prizes go first. After the first eight numbers or so the first Bingo gets called. The guy who won walked away with a brand new bicycle! As more numbers got called, more and more people got Bingo and a line for the prizes started to form. I saw the prize pile slowly starting to shrink and thought, "Dammit! Where's my Bingo!?". After quite a few numbers were called and a few hundred prizes had already been given away I finally got a Bingo. I pushed my way past the old people and little kids (no, just kidding :) to get to the front of the line, eagerly awaiting my prize... to get a can of this. Is it crab soup? I don't know, so I asked one of my students I saw there but he didn't know either. Later on I asked my co-worker (who speaks really good english) and she says it's to make crab miso soup, but isn't very tasty. Oh great! I tried to pawn it off to my supervisor as his prize since he gave me his card but he didn't want it either! I guess I'll just use it as a paperweight, or give it as omiyage to an unsuspecting JET.

After the festival was over the yakuba team (who put on the entire festival by the way) stayed and we had our own yakuniku fest with all the leftover food that wasn't sold at the BBQ. We ate for a solid two hours and then went out for karaoke afterwards. A late night and heavy drinking on a Sunday? Sure, why not! The Japanese know how to party! We hung out there for quite a few hours and they made me sing YMCA a bunch of times.

Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned it yet, but my co-workers told me that ALL new employees at town hall have to sing in a karaoke competition coming up on the 29th. The deadline to pick a song was coming up quickly and I didn't have any ideas so I went with one Justin mentioned, YMCA. Gah! What was I thinking? I'm not really afraid to make an ass of myself for their entertainment so it should be interesting..

Anyways, they made me sing YMCA in not only the english version, but in the Japanese version too! I sang it at least 3-4 times because it was "good practice" for the competition. I had intended to sing YMCA in english but they thought I did such a good job at the Japanese version that now I have to do it in Japanese for the competition. Ye gads! I have to have the song memorized by then too so I guess it's back to the karaoke bar for more practice.. I'll keep you all updated on that.