Wakakusa Yamayaki!

At last, the long-awaited Wakakusa Yamayaki photos! Note that these are all linked to full-size originals if you want to get a better view.

It's 1:00 am right now, and will doubtless be 2:00 before I'm done [Ed - 2:30, as it turns out], so I'm only going to provide a rough summary of what went on, and I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story. [Ed - yeah, right.]

It was a beautiful day, though a bit chilly, and the lot of us hiked up the winding road to a peaceful, grassy hill called Wakakusa. Wakakusa is Japanese for "young grass". There is a very good reason for this, as the grass is kept eternally young and fresh by ruthlessly incinerating the entire mountain every year.


Although the event itself wouldn't start until around 6pm, the ancient Nara equivalent of Superbowl pregame shows was already starting at midday. We were hiking up the last stretch of winding forest road from Nara Park to Wakakusa-yama, when the echoing sounds of taiko drumming came drifting to us on the wind. The thunderous drums beckoned, and we quickened our pace. Soon the forest opened to reveal an enormous barren hillside. A crowd had already gathered to watch the agile young drummers drawing rhythms from the drums in dance of primal energy, their bodies as much a musical instrument as the drums they played.


As I stood by the stage, watching the drummers with David and Olivier, the two French guys, and our German friend Tomas (Thomas? I can't spell in German), whom we met up with at the event by chance, the others had a different priority - food. As I'm certain Lily would have, had she been there.

Bobby, Toshiko, and Yuki got on the surprisingly long, snaking line that had been growing all day in front of the gruel tent. Well, "gruel" is how it's translated in English. It's not quite so appetizing as all that. It's this stuff called "okayu" which is basically watery, tasteless rice. In it you can place various interesting things such as "umeboshi" which is a shriveled red plum the size in cross-section of a CR2032 battery, which is so intensely sour that if you eat one by itself, it will cause your face to squinch down into a singularity for a few hours and you will actually briefly have your own event horizon. Yummy.


And there we sat. On our cool 150 yen folding chairs. Drinking hot sake and slowly augmenting our numbers. Before long, Hiroko and Makoto joined us, then Linda arrived, straight from the airport, bringing an entourage of Canadians and their servants to witness the spectacle. Oh, and also bags and bags of snacks, drinks, and other stuff to quench the thirst and sate the hunger of those of us who had been sitting out upon the cold hillside since the first rays of the dawn. Or, well, at least like 2pm...

And so we waited thus. The earth slowly turned beneath us, and the sun said its last goodbyes. The sky grew dark, and a cold wind began to blow. Below us had amassed legions of intrepid firefighters. The prayers for safety were spoken, and at last it was time for the ritual to begin.


At the designated shrine, the Firestarters held their torches steady. A priest walked back and forth within the fenced-off shrine area, speaking arcane words from a Shinto ritual dating from antiquity. When the proper gods had been addressed and all was ready, the flame was revealed. This flame had been started by hand that day at Kasuga Taisha, a nearby shrine complex, and carried to the mountain in a holy procession. And now, at this moment, it leapt unbound into its moment of glory!


Robed and hooded figures held steady as the flames from their torches leapt to the sky. A crowd of onlookers stood enchanted by the entrancing dance of the flames, as subdued chanting droned on in the background.


When the chanting had gathered a certain momentum, the monks proceeded to carry their torches and lanterns up up the hill, away from the shrine, to the, um... next holy place of some sort.


Here the flame grew to the size of a great bonfire, contained only by the will of the gods and a single strand of twine about the perimeter. The fire was now ready to be carried to the hillside, but first...


Fireworks!!!


Personally, I think they were just trying to compete with the burning man back in Jefferson...


After the rumbling echoes of the spectacular finale finally faded away over the hills of Nara, the firefighters got down to business. Swarming across the hill, they began several lines of fires in the grass.

Unfortunately, it had rained that morning... the grass was still a bit moist, and the fires didn't catch very well. The fires kept burning, but it was starting to get really cold, and there were grumblings and murmurs of mutiny from my crew.

Turning around, where there had just been an enormous, crushing crowd, we were faced instead with a barren hillside. Crickets would have been chirping if it weren't the middle of winter. Clearly everyone else had already figured out that the best part of the show was over. We slowly followed suit and headed back down to the station.

I'm skipping over about two hours of terrible confusion regarding two missing bags and four people without cell phones getting separated from the group... but everything was sorted out in the end and all was well.

We retired to my place, where we ate, drank, and were merry, or at least warm, and then (as is often the case with parties at my house) I busted out tha go boardz boyyy!


The CJP / GA Tech crew (including the only new person at the party who actually had some knowledge of the game!)



And finally, enough people give me flack about being surrounded by women in all my pictures. Not always so. Rather, this evening was apparently Yuki's day in the sun. Or... night in the ... not sun? (I was going to say antisun, but that would be a gratuitous astronomy reference, and I've grown out of doing things like that) [Ed - erm, what was that about an event horizon earlier?]

Anyway, the most important takeaway from that night was that I got David hooked on go, and I'm looking forward to many games together in the next few months!