This weekend was completely different from how I planned it, but turned out to be really good fun. The original plan was to go to a little island called Sado, off the coast of Niigata, for a huge taiko drumming festival/Japanese hippie haven. So we (myself and four Australian girls) got up really early on Saturday and drove for 3 hours from Shiroishi (near the east coast of Japan) to Niigata (on the west coast). When we got to the ferry terminal, we found out that it would cost over £200 to get the ferry to Sado Island. This was more money than we even had with us! To make matters worse, two of the girls told us that they had to be back in Shiroishi by 6pm the next day, so they would only get a few hours at the festival before they had to start travelling back by public transport.
So...we drove all the way across the country again, back to the east coast! This time to Iwaki beach in Fukushima prefecture, where there was a huge, free dance music festival/beach party. There were 2 stages, 30+ DJs, a few live bands, a huge motocross ramp, some skateboarding, volleyball, and of course the beach. Music covered reggae, dub, drum 'n' bass, house, psy-trance, hiphop, electronica, and even some very strange Japanese dancehall.
We arrived at about 3pm, while it was still warming up, and chilled on the beach for a bit. As it got dark it really started to get going, and I would guess there were about 2000 people there. As usual, the Japanese were a bit reticent to dance and were stuck in shuffling-swaying mode, so we had to take matters into our own hands. We started pulling out the silliest dance moves we possibly could, and soon we (especially I, I have to say) had an army of Japanese people dancing with us and following our every move! Suddenly some really good trancey house came on, and the whole crowd just went freakin' crazy! Inspired by me, their new spiritual leader, the crowd was in a frenzy. The coolest part was that the whole beach was covered in this really thick fog, so all you could see was thousands of Japanese people spacking out in the mist. It was positively euphoric. Pretty soon some rubbish psy-trance came on and I retired gracefully, a big sweaty mess.
About midnight, we decided "our work here is done" and drove home, although I think the festival was carrying on until sunrise. We got home about 3am, having driven 9 hours in one day. Despite my late night, I had to get up early on Sunday and go to Matsushima. I say "had to" because I was visiting a temple that's only open for one weekend every 33 years! Matsushima is apparently one of the top 3 tourist destinations in Japanese. It's a little seaside town with lots of temples and an impressive view of thousands of tiny islands. We queued for about 90 mins and then shuffled through the tiny little temple. There was the usual dilemma of "Should I pray? I'm not a buddhist." I decided not to in the end. Afterwards we saw a cool taiko drumming display, and then had a look round the most beautiful Zen garden I've ever seen in Japan. I'll have to go back there on a random weekday so I can have a look when it's not packed with people.
On the way home I stopped off in Sendai and went up to an observation deck on the top floor of the tallest building in the city. Some cool views from up there. When I got back to my town, Shiroishi, in the evening I was surprised to see loads of little pieces of fire floating down the river! It turned out to be some kind of mini festival. There were loads of lanterns strung across the river and little kids were sending these floating fire thingies downstream. Shame I didn't have my camera.
