Wednesday, 19 September 2007

Zao ROCK!

We found out about a music festival going on in Zao when we were there at the orientation. It sounded like fun, and it was free so I was very determined to go to this weekend music festival, whether I had camping equipment or not (I didn’t - I was utterly unprepared which is not like me but I had an incredible amount of fun - one of the best weekends I’ve ever had). I met another JET from the next town by Nanyo and we headed off in my car to Mt Zao. Mt Zao, as you will now be aware of from the abbreviation, is a mountain. Mountains are commonly high and this one is no exception - so my poor oldish car had to struggle for ages up slopes and mountain side roads whilst I had to struggle with a huge ton of low lying cloud or fog. It was very thick, but me being the experienced driver that I am managed it safely through, and after a certain point we were above the low lying fog. 
It took us ages to find the place, which had done a good job of concealing its noise, music and lighting right up until you were very close to it, but find it we did, and luckily we found a bunch of other JETs too. Loads! So we had plenty of tents to choose from to kip over. The festival was quite small - it was only the second year (second time) it had been organized. We arrived on the first night - Friday and there were probably 1,000 people (perhaps a few more) dotted around the place. On the Saturday, numbers probably peaked at 2,000 ish. It wasn’t really rock music we heard - they were all Japanese bands and DJs, but my, the Japanese sure do make great music. 


This is a band called 'Angri' and they were amazing! Ska, hip-hop, rocky dance music!


The morning after. High up on the mountain, steam rises from beyond the forest areas.

After we got settled we danced for a few hours to a techno-y DJ housed in a Wig-wam, and after that (around 2/3am) me and Siobhan headed back to the tent, only to find a rather deserted dance area with a DJ playing random tunes like Obla Di Obla Da, and La Bamba. We couldn’t just leave that DJ to feel like he’d wasted his night playing a carefully selected and prepared music mix to the few Japanese people who weren’t dancing - we had to step in and give it our all. What followed was me, Siobhan (an ace Yamagata newbie) and Max (second year) dancing our hearts out, often making it seem like we’d prepared a highly elaborate and well choreographed piece of work. We cajoled the few Japanese spectators into laughing and dancing about too and it was definately the highlight of the weekend for me. 
We were absolutely exhausted by the time it got to 4.30/5am and went to the tents to get a much need 4/5ish hours of sleep before the next line of events. On the Saturday everybody was feeling a little worse-for-wear, I had a sports day at Yoshino on the Sunday so I wasn’t going to stop over that night but I stayed till midnight to watch and dance to some amazing bands before driving back and getting home at about 2.30am, only to have a Sports Day at 7.45am the following morning. 
Of course, I took part in it too! I did the Yoshino Marathon - about 5km - twice around the village, I was surprised I didn’t collapse with fatigue, but I did make it through the whole marathon and I didn’t come last! Not surprisingly I wasn’t too keen on making it to the staff enkai after - I had a very good time…but I really needed some sleep. Because the Sports Day was on the Sunday - I was given a day off in lieu on the monday - so I went to the biggest city in the Tohoku region of Japan (Northern Japan) - Sendai. I also decided that I would go by Shinkansen which was pretty amazing - they are unbelievably fast! It was nice to see a big city and some more foreigners than I've become used to seeing. I tried to find the office to get a re-entry permit for if I want to fly out of Japan and come back (stupid unneccessary beauracracy) but everything was in Japanese, so I didn’t find it in time! Ah well! C’est la vie Japonaise!


The presentation ceremony at the end of Yoshino Sports Day

The good old tug of war...


Outside the train station in Sendai - the big(ger) city!

I must also give special mention to the valorous attempts of Siobhan McMillan the wonder woman from Middlesborough to get from her tiny town in North Yamagata to the heights of Mount Zao. Having got on the train to the bottom of Zao, the doors wouldn’t open at the Zao station stop and so she had to get off at the next station - a tiny platform with absolutely nothing around it and a ridiculously long Japanese name none of us could pronounce easily. She waited for a train to go back the other way which finally happened. Then she tried to grab a taxi outside of Zao station, only to have the first one sabotaged by a Japanese person, whilst she was trying to explain where she wanted to go. She had more success with the second taxi, actually managing to seize his attention and get him to drive her somewhere, although he had no idea what the Zao Rock Festival was, let alone where it was! Nobody seemed to know anything about the music festival and there were no flyers or details lying around for her to point to! So with a bit of guidance from me she told the taxi to take her to the top of the mountain, Zao Onsen which was quite near to the music festival and I would try to pick her up around that area. However, the taxi driver was trying to be very helpful and rang up a few of his mates about the strange mysterious event the strange mysterious foreigner wanted to go to. Having no information from his friends he stopped at a Convenience store near to the onsen and managed to get details from the workers there, which finally got Siobhan to the party! Gambatte Siobhan! I salute your efforts!



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