CROW FESTIVAL

I was awakened way early this morning by a rumble on the roof. In some places its a fiddler, but not here. Bit of an adrenalin shock to be awakened at the crack of dawn by a rolling rumble on the roof on your summer day off. Where's the rumble when it's a workday and I have to get up at this hour but might oversleep? Where is a pain in the butt when you need it? What am I talking about?

What's worse in this respect is that our roof is of tiles (which is great in all respects other than tumbling monkeys), so the rumble was tumbling me out of my sleep a lot more than it would have on, say, a strong metal roof or a slate roof, where the sound would have been a nice quiet sliding offward into silent space, and I could have gone on sleeping as per my wont, but no-- the noise, its heft and the sneakily shifting movements of the struggle led me to think it was a couple of grumpy monkey garden-scouts grappling in silence up there, grinding, clacking and rumbling the tiles as they pushed and shoved their way across the roof above my bed.

In retrospect, it was an oddly avocal fight for monkeys, but how was I to think of that, there at the edge of dawn, just dragged from the arms of Brigitte Bardot in 1960? So in the interest of saving my garden I tore myself away from the pouty BB and leaped out of bed, pulled aside the curtain and bleared into the dimness of a predawn mountainside to see what was up, just as a big black wingbeaktangle of two full-sized crows came tumbling off the roof, raveled together in a deep crow argument. I thought: today must be a crow festival.

The dark opponents fell quietly together until about halfway down they broke off and flew to the garden where they sat on different poles and at last began speaking loudly as always, arguing about corvine stuff like "It's my turn to check Brady's kitchen garbage!" the crow festival equivalent of "I was supposed to judge the wet t-shirt contest!" Anyway, all day the clouds of crows hung around here and there in bunches on trees and poles and in rice fields, chatting about old times, some kind of festival for sure, they all wore the usual costume, that black outfit of feathers, beak and beady eyes, you know the one, they seemed to get a kick out of it, made tricky noises all day long that distracted me wherever I was, I'd hear a weird sound, turn and say what was that at the door, the window, in the trees, the garden, out on the road etc.

Even now they're yakking long distances everywhere about something important in the crow culture. What could this festival be about? What's so important to crows? What could they possibly respect so much? Carrion is always randomly available, so what's to celebrate? Plus it's way too early for the human rice harvest and crows themselves don't produce anything but noise and more crows. Maybe it's a wild religious event-- but if I even hint at anything spiritual to crows, they just throw back their heads and caw, and caw, and caw...

SPIRITUAL RECHARGE

Bearers of one of the many sacred taiko (lit: big drum)
shouldered and drummed around the neighborhoods
of Omihachiman City during the Hachiman Matsuri (festival)
finally make it through Hachimangu Shrine gate at the end,
after many tries.

HIRA HAKKO

On Saturday we went north a bit to see the Hira Hakko, a local festival we hadn't yet made it to that's been happening every Spring around this time for 1500 years or so, held for the safety of all who live and work on Lake Biwa and its shores. Priests from a distant affiliated downlake temple, a dozen yamabushi, a squad of shakuhachi players and several beautiful young women in kimono come sailing to Omimaiko, along the way throwing paper prayers on the wind and ritually pouring other blessed waters into the Lake. After they land at Omimaiko they walk the long road, stopping to pray at a local statue of Kannon.

From there they and the whole mob of us that had gathered by then, everyone Lake-related and their families and friends, relatives, tourists, mobs of photographers, walked out into the pine groves that cover the central axis of the small and anciently famous peninsula, toward loudening multidrum music pounding like the theme drums from The Seven Samurai.

Along the way the crowd discovered a group of young female art college students all dressed up in fantastic costumes who were quietly and privately (or so they had expected) making some kind of strange art/music video on the beach when suddenly this mob came along and they were at once the center of attention from a growing throng, being asked what they were up to by everyone, who thought they were some new strange and unsettling part of the ancient ceremony - which the poor girls repeatedly and heatedly denied - they were so embarrassed at being seen dressed so strangely out here and doing these odd things, they had utterly not anticipated any vast swarm of observers to descend on them, it put a major cramp in their artistic intentions.

They finally tried to hide under a tarp from the photographers and crowds streaming steadily toward the beach out on the point where, in a big square made sacred by bamboo poles strung with rice straw rope stood a large pile of green cedar boughs that, after extended ceremonial praying and mythodramatizing, the yamabushi set afire; the singing and music went on, wafting across the Lake with the prayers, like the smoke...

There was a generous variety of weather to go along with the intensity of it all, which is as it should be, the weather being a big factor in comprehensive Lake safety: rain was there in bursts, and wind was steady, there was lakespray and sun and scuds of mist, some wannabe snowflakes showed up and anything else that can be called weather was likely around there somewhere.

Folks from way young to max elderly in all states of health huddled around, kids running free and taking part in the drumming, folks in wheelchairs there to get some of the sacred smoke unto themselves to cure their ills. And it seems to work, for since then I've been feeling better in all respects.