Which brings me to as close to a point as we'll get in this blog: Japan has mastered the art of tourism in an interesting way that will probably be mimicked the world over in coming decades. In general, when sightseeing, the Holy Grail for our generation of privileged white people is Authenticity. We don't want the typical tourist crap that's just made up for foreigners, your Disneylands, your Biggest Balls of Twine and what-have-you; we want real, historical sites and cultural artifacts that are simultaneously off the beaten path AND easily accessible without a car, of and for the local culture AND having information in English for our benefit, unspoiled by tourists AND...y'know, with a gift shop.
Which makes Japan a perfect country for the modern traveler! Japan is absolutely full of tourist hot spots that are completely, authentically historical...in that they were invented for tourists decades (if not centuries) ago. Beppu, for instance, the place that we visited in March, is renowned as a vacation spot for its public baths, which are counted among the 17th century list of the Three Great Hot Springs of Japan (which was written to drum up tourism, more or less).
Also, the whole town smells like egg farts.
Most every city and region in Japan, no matter how remote, is famous in Japan for some specialty produce or snack or folk tale or festival or soft drink that is, almost without exception, blown up in importance to draw in tourists. But, apart from Kyoto and Tokyo, most of these were meant for Japanese tourists, which means they're all nicely authentic, and since they've been passing around lists of the great tourist spots and appropriate souvenirs for centuries, everything is perfectly historical, too!
Case in point: Tokushima. The town on Shikoku that lies on the end of our local train/ferry line, it is raved about on Wikitravel as "pleasant enough to pass through on your way to more interesting places." Fun ahoy!
We arrived, seasick from our two-hour ride on a dingy little commuter ferry, full of excitement and not a lot else. This being just a weekend jaunt, we had taken the preparatory measures of making a hotel reservation at the cheapest place we could find, and...that's about it, really. We've gotten good enough at traveling within Japan by now that we decided to put our faith in the Tourist Information kiosk that we knew would be headquartered in the train station. Sure enough, we found a wealth of information about the Awa Odori Matsuri, the traditional dance festival known across Japan (sound familiar yet?), which would be happening about a week after we were due to leave. Worry not, though: at the Awa Odori Information Center, located 500 m. from the train station, it was Awa Odori every day!
That evening, we took the special Awa Odori Bus that took us from our hotel to the Awa Odori Information Center for the Awa Odori Recital, where we proceeded to sit around until the curtain rose on dozens of people in festival garb, dancing their little hearts out for us. We were the only Westerners in the crowd, an unusual occurrence for us, especially at a touristy place like this. This guy then proceeded to teach us the one step involved in the Awa Odori, which I will now pass on to you:
Raise your right hand and extend your left foot. Withdraw both, then extend your left hand and right foot. Repeat, occasionally yelling something indistinct.
In sum, this dance has about half as much to it as the Hokey Pokey. Still, we watched, attention captured by the sheer scale of the colors and costumes. A festival every day, indeed!
After a good half hour of this, the audience was entreated to come up and dance with the townspeople. Now, having read my fair share of H. P. Lovecraft stories, I know better than to accept an offer to participate in a town's ancient ritual; that's a sure way to be burned alive or sacrificed to an Old One. (Plus, I have a phobia of audience participation that has persisted through two degrees, a high school acting career, a year of musical performance and four years of teaching. For whatever reason, whenever a performer looks my way -- be they a Renaissance Faire wench, a stage hypnotist, or a really anyone with a microphone -- I instantly find religion and pray to anyone who might listen that I don't get noticed.) Still, this being a special occasion, we made an exception; after all, Awa Odori doesn't come along every d...hm. Somewhat sheepishly, we got up and shook what our mothers gave us. When the dust cleared and we were asked to return to our seats, Jenn had been snagged with a lei, which meant that she was marked to remain on stage. I was about 70% sure this wasn't a human sacrifice thing, so I grabbed the camera and sat down quietly.
What followed was an exercise in paranoia made hideously real: the old guy running the show began interviewing the four "winners" one by one, asking more or less incomprehensible questions. The most I could get out of the first two interviews was "ramen." When he came to Jenn, he very politely asked in Japanese, "Do you speak Japanese?", which Jenn answered affirmatively. Unduly encouraged, he then rattled off a series of quick grunts and whistles*, then held the microphone to her expectantly.
Jenn answered very well with her brilliant pronunciation, though judging by the dude's reaction, they may have been answers to the wrong questions. Still, Jenn knows how to work a crowd: she got a great laugh out of the crowd with her Osaka slang (as an imperfect parallel, imagine a Japanese tourist visiting Manhattan and saying "y'all come back now, hear?"). For her valor, she was awarded a beautiful Awa Odori handkerchief.
And thus our trip to Tokushima more or less came to an end. We'd seen most of what the town had to offer already, in that we had been to the Awa Odori Center. The next day, we spent several hours getting to the town's other sight, the Indigo Dying Center, which was a blast, and then several more hours getting back to the ferry. What can we take away from this adventure? Well, up to this point, I had tried to take a Dave Barry line as my motto: "Nobody cares if you can dance. Just get up and dance." Personally, I still believe it, but now I know that participating without self-consciousness is no guarantee that they won't make fun of you in front of a crowd. Just another day on display in the Gaijin Zoo!
Next: Gaijin Patrol World 2-1: Hot, Hot Desert!
*As previously mentioned, Old-Man-Japanese is its own breed of crazy. I think our Japanese has gotten pretty damn good, evidenced by the fact that we can do all kinds of tasks like pay bills, order in restaurants, complain about the weather, and apologize for our rudness -- the full suite of useful Japanese, really -- but every sentence uttered by a man over 60 sounds like barking to me. For instance, rather than saying "Ohayou Gozaimasu" to greet people in the morning, the old dudes at my school shorten it to "Nf!"
