People Persons

The next morning, we were relieved to be finished with our hardest task at Pasar, though that relief was tempered slightly by our disappointment at the disappearing audience.

“A lot of our friends spent 10, 12 hours driving here yesterday from Wakayama or further,” Natsu explained.  “They all fell asleep early.”

“But you can perform again on Friday if you want to,” said Aki in a rare show of energy.  We agreed, excited, and, figuring we’d practiced enough by that point, threw ourselves into enjoying the festival.  Over the next week, we overcame our shyness enough to become quite close to some of the Pasar family and friends:

There was Mayumi, proprietress of "Mayumi's Miracle Cafe," with an unbelievable laugh and a cigarettey voice.  The rumors said she had worked in the fashion industry for 30 years before quitting to run a vegan cafe.  When we parted ways, we wondered if we would meet again, and she told us, "Maybe we will.  Every minute, every second...is a miracle!" and roared with laughter.

Shuuichi.  Tatted up, giant holes in his ears that he would sometimes use to transport cigarettes, carrying around a hollowed-out gourd full of alcohol, he would frequently just bend over or list to one side for a few minutes.  I thought he might be narcoleptic, but then I saw him driving a car.  He did talk to me at length about his life -- I caught very little of it, but it seems he was a hikkikomori, a shut-in, for twelve years.  Now he spends his time trying to experience as much as he can of life.  Rumor has it he did some of his tattoos himself while locked away in his house.

This dude came by himself and danced like nobody has danced before, usually while wearing outrageous masks or swinging around kites that he made out of cut-up magazines.  Oh, and he's just as blurry in real life.

Yoko and little Haru-kun, sporting the official festival garb.

Our worries about filling our idle time fizzled quickly: from our first cup of coffee at 8 a.m., we were put to work kneading pizza dough, lighting the fire for the brick oven, baking and selling pizzas, helping Maya in the communal kitchen, carrying heavy objects to the stage and back.  When we had a moment to breathe, we were asked to give the other WWOOFers a break and work the bar.

“Hey, you can’t come back here,” the Austrian told us when we first fetched someone a beer.

“What?” I asked, certain that I had just misheard over the band.  But no, he explained, the bar area was only for staff, and Jenn and I weren’t allowed back there.  In an uncharacteristic disregard for confrontation, I explained to him in small words that we were part of the staff, that we were here to help at Pasar, and Natsu herself told us to take over the bar.  He spent the next few hours offering elaborate apologies and bowing in what sure looked like a patronizing manner.

In truth, I liked being a bartender.  It was one of the few tasks that needed doing that didn’t require a higher level of Japanese or knowledge of the inner workings of Pasar Moon.  I got to be right at the heart of the party -- hell, after a couple of Pasar mojitos, I fancied myself the most indispensable part of the party -- and I had an excuse to interact with all of the merrymakers.  Plus, at the bar, we had the best seat in the house:

“That’s now how you make a mojito,” the Austrian told me, his lip curled in a sneer, his eyes rolling like pinballs.  I pretended not to hear him, but at last I thanked him for the help and got him to teach me how to properly pour one.

Then it was, “You have to tip the glass when you pour the beer.”  And, still later, “You opened the valve on the keg too much, let me fix it for you.”  When he disappeared after pouring three cups of pure foam, I adjusted it back.

Of course, if we were part of the Pasar staff, we may not have acted like it the whole time.  After Aki told us that, despite his earlier offer, Dragon Room presenters wouldn’t be receiving envelopes full of dead presidents to perform, we were informed that we would still be getting free admission to the festival and free food.  Unfortunately, meals at Pasar, especially during festival time, are a very sporadic thing.  Often we would be so busy at the pizza oven that we wouldn't think to eat anything until two or three in the afternoon.  With no staff meal obviously forthcoming, we would buy some food from one of the many food stalls, only to be told half an hour later that the staff's free lunch was ready.

Still, there are fates worse than a piping-hot Pasar Burger.

At least the music was great.  The live performances spanned from trippy looped acoustic guitars to reggae to punk to things we’d never heard before.  One of Pasar’s regulars, supposedly the 40th generation priest at the local Shinto shrine, took the stage to play something extremely trippy that he called “space rock.”  The DJs killed it, too, playing a great deal of Afrobeat and funk and generally keeping the crowd in a dancing mood: one proud dad bounced his little daughter on his shoulders to the sounds of “Rapper’s Delight,” big old grins on both their faces.  We bopped our heads and danced in place by the pizza oven or at the bar while the Austrian sulked or bored the other WWOOFer to tears.

Taka watched a kid use a piece of bamboo as a guitar to play along with the band.  He drilled a couple of holes in it and attached a shoulder strap.  The kid proceeded to completely shred on his new instrument.

On Friday night, before performing at the acoustic showcase that would close out the evening, we were treated to a burst of traditional Japanese culture.  First, a duo dressed in kimonos took the outdoor stage and led the crowd in bon-odori, the standard Japanese festival dance.  There’s really no analogue for it in America; it’s a seasonal activity that everyone in the country is very familiar with, so maybe the best comparison would be like singing Christmas carols.  But, y'know, dancing.  The crowd went nuts, every man, woman, child and dog gleefully performing the dance moves that are so remedial they’re almost offensive.

Then, the central courtyard of Pasar was transformed into a stage for the kagura, a traditional Japanese performance art.  It was described to me as a “snake dance” or “warrior dance,” but what it turned out to be was an elaborately staged pantomime.  The first act had a masked figure engage in a fishing exhibition that had him flinging hard candy to the crowd and snookering volunteers to come and help him catch papier-mache fish.  He brought our young American friend up, and she performed her duties admirably (though she did break his fishing pole), apparently oblivious to the fact that the young, blonde American invited to participate in an ancient ritual under the full moon is pretty much doomed.

The second act brought the promised snakes, which were actually dragons for some reason.  The protagonist, whose words were muffled through his mask and who gasped for air in between lines, was evidently some sort of mustachioed dragon-slayer, much like Super Mario.  The three dragons were rendered with terrifying detail, and I gasped with the rest of the audience when they had the protagonist tangled in their deadly coils.  The story ended on a happy note, though, with the dragons’ heads chopped off and tossed into the crowd.

Luckily, we didn’t have to follow the dramatized execution: before we took the stage again in the Dragon Room, there was a long performance by a very diverse group of musicians, including hula dancers and a bongo player who was the spitting image of Snoop Dogg (but, y’know, Japanese).  The house was still fairly full when Jenny Dreadful (that’s us) started to perform, and with only fifteen or so minutes to play, we did some of our old favorites: “You Made the Night Too Long,” “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen,” “Feelin’ Good,” and “I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.”  The audience loved it, and we felt immediately vindicated.  We came to Japan to do exactly this, and how ‘bout that, we killed it!  The final performance by a tall, mohawked didgeridoo player brought a satisfying end to the evening.  Jenny Dreadful received about 1000 yen in tips, 500 of which we gave to the didgeridooist.

Saturday came, the penultimate day of the festival.  Everything had settled into a nice, comfortable groove: coffee, kitchen duties, making pizza, breakfast at 2 p.m.  In the evening, when Jenn went to lie down on the tent for awhile, I went to the bar to offer the WWOOFers a break.

“Hey, Harry!” the Austrian greeted me.  “Tequila?”  He produced the bottle and poured a couple of shots, plus one for Mayumi.

“Hey, thanks,” I said cautiously.  “You buying?”

“Nah, I don’t have any money,” he replied.

Mayumi and I exchanged a look.  “I can keep a secret,” she said, then burst into laughter.

The Austrian produced the salt and announced in a bizarre fake accent even more affected than his own, “Hai, Pablo Escobar especial...co-caine!”  He looked at us expectantly.  Mayumi and I laughed, though I think hers may have been genuine.  We downed our shots, regretting that the limes had sold out the night before, and all high-fived.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said the other WWOOFer in a low voice.  Before I could get a chance to ask her any questions, I heard a booming “Tequila!” followed by a raucous cheer.  Behind me, the Austrian was pouring another round of gratis tequila shots.

“Yeah, he’s been doing that for awhile now,” she told me, rubbing her eyes.  I eyed the Austrian, who cheersed with a half dozen roaring drunk musicians (including last night's didgeridooist) and offered them "Pablo Escobar especial...co-caine" to a barrage of laughter.

"Don't worry," I told her with the false bravado of speaking to a 17-year-old, "I've got this."

Dutifully, I took the bar next to the Austrian and slapped him on the back.  "Hey," I began.  "Hey," this time in a friendly manner, as one would address his best buddy who also happens to be haplessly drunk.  "I've got it, man, you can take a break."

"No, no, it's good, I...I work."  His English was worse than I remembered, and if he was this out of it, I doubted my ability to peacefully convince him to leave.  We worked side by side, though hardly together, through the final band of the evening.  I poured a few more rounds of tequila for some of the musicians -- apparently he had given them a taste for the stuff.  Eventually he wandered off once he realized he wouldn't be getting any more free drinks, and I kept to my work cheerfully.

Around eleven o'clock, when the last band had wrapped up, the didgeridooist assembled his friends to do another shot of tequila.  I poured four, then five, then eventually seven as more friends wandered up.  I hadn't congratulated the tall man for his excellent performance on the didgeridoo the night before, but I held my tongue when I saw how much he was listing from side to side.  He met my eyes and gave me some sour look I couldn't read, so I went back to my work.  When I passed out the shots and the salt, the musicians raised their cups, cheersed, and downed their tequila with gusto.  Except for the didgeridooist, who pointed at my chest, slurred something beyond my Japanese ability, then reached his long arm across the bar and poured his tequila all down the front of my shirt.  Pinned by the bar as I was, I had no room to do anything but take it, the cold liquor wetting my clothes.

I lacked the vocabulary to take any action.  "Why did you do that," for instance, or "what the hell did you do that for?"  What I did manage was a polite, "Oh, no, you spilled your drink!"  The didgeridooist reeled back a bit, not averting his dark eyes from mine.  His friends started to disappear, though one or two of them said something quiet to him.

"You say somethin'?" he barked at me, or at least that's how I understood it.  I denied saying anything, collected the empty shot glasses, and turned my back to him, trying to keep tears from welling up.  He wandered off at some point, and I held it together long enough to close the bar promptly at midnight and collapse in the tent.  I heard later that Taka reopened the bar not long after and the party, including the Austrian and the didgeridooist, kept the fun going until five in the morning.

I wish I understood what was going through the didgeridooist's head (or, y'know, coming out of his mouth).  I've never had the experience of esteem and admiration for someone turning to a feeling of betrayal.  At least, not so quickly.  Or wetly.  Maybe I somehow gave offense without realizing it.  Maybe he was just a mean drunk.  Probably that one.  He evaded my eyes for the rest of the festival, either because he felt shame about what he did or, not remembering, he disliked me enough to avoid me.

Whatever the reason, I tried not to think anything bad about Pasar, even as I saw Pasar's friends and staff hang out with this guy into the wee hours.  This may have been an ugly incident, but peace and love were still the words at Pasar, and 99% of the people at the festival immediately became my favorite people in the world.