Hotaru Matsuri

Tonight, I went with some of the ALTs in Takahashi (and one from closer to the city) to a local firefly festival in this area of Takahshi known as Nariwa. Technically, until a couple years ago, Nariwa used to be its own town proper. Then Takahashi, giant sprawl that it is, kind of swallowed up Nariwa. But even still, a lot of the things are kind of distinct about it, and you kind of need a car to get there proper.

They were holding a firefly festival along one of the riversides in this absolutely gorgeous area. I'm quite sad that I didn't have my camera on hand to capture the gorgeousness of the area; nestled between mountains, the firefly festival area is considerably more rural than where I live. There are loads of rice paddies in tiered hills with traditional style houses. There's also a river that's mostly overgrown with grass where we watched the fireflies. Some of the roads were about as wide as my friend's (tiny) Kei-car and had no guard rails and lead to a steep drop into a flooded rice paddy.

The festival itself was held at one of the middle schools (that I don't teach at). They had festival snacky foods, but I had come from my friend's birthday celebrations in Okayama city prior to this, so I wasn't super hungry. They had the usual though - takoyaki, fries, crepes, karaage, meat on a stick...

The area it was held in is also famous for this dance story thing about a monk who has his holy water stolen by demons who then transform into a giant 8-headed snake. Kagura... I think it might be called? I forget. Either way this town is famous for that, and you can find statues and other references to the dance all over the area. They performed the dance in the gym for us, and afterwards were throwing out snacks and mochi. Like, hard mochi in plastic bags. Like, potentially dangerous if you weren't paying attention and got beaned in the face by one. As it was, everyone (adults included) were scrambling to get the food so if you weren't careful, you might find yourself elbowed by a sweet looking grandma.

I actually ran into a couple of my students at the festival, and two of them hung around to talk to me in this Japanese-English kind of hybrid. It was quite fun actually, and the kids were sweet. It was really fun talking to them too, outside of school. I got to dispel the "you're with boys therefore boyfriend?" thing yet again, but this time, I explained to them that the other ALTs in Takahashi were all dudes (no joke) so that if they saw me with a guy he was FRIEND ONLY since there were lots of guys out here. Thankfully, they understood. Hopefully they will spread this to the other students so that the first years aren't constantly thinking I'm dating a bunch of different guys haha. Ha.

Anyways, the fireflies were gorgeous! I don't remember ever seeing fireflies (though I suppose it's entirely possible since we used to go to Minnesota in the summer), so I counted this as my "first firefly seeing experience."

And wow. They're absolutely gorgeous. They also stay sufficiently far away so that I don't get freaked out. There were tons along the river. Some floated high in the air, their lights easy to see against the backdrop of the forest-covered mountain/hills. Others floated just off the road, making it slightly dangerous for those who were trying to catch them. It was so serene though; we were in an area with not many people, so it was really quiet, and you could just hear nature all around you. It was in a super rural area, so there were little to no lights around to compete with the fireflies (though the moon was pretty bright).

Absolute gorgeousness. I can see why they put a level like this into Katamari, and how well it's paired with the music on that level.