Hojoya: Carnies come to Fukuoka!

This week Hakozaki Shrine has been packed with hundreds of thousands of people visiting the Hojoya festival. Its a pretty old festival that commemorates....something. Probably. I don't know actually.

Anyway, the festival is most well known for these delicate glass ornaments hand-blown and painted by artisans at the shrine which they sell for between 3,000 and 9,000 yen each. They have a special religious significance and all people who purchase them must devote themselves to a rather long ritual that involves storing them on a shelf somewhere in their home and, being completely at a loss to find anything useful to do with them, forgetting about their existence until several years later when they inevitably get broken during a move.

We decided not to purchase one.

Anyway, they put some interesting stuff on display at the shrine during the festival and open up bits that usually are closed to the public. Like these pictures:
And these Mikoshi:
And these masks:
And a bunch of other stuff that people don't really come to a festival to see but look at anyway because everything else is too crowded.

We had a bit of excitement in the shrine as we got on TV! Cable TV! Which we....don't get. But it was fun anyway. A nice reporter asked us to stand in front of their camera and give a thank you message to someone. I chose my parents. We did two takes, I was pretty nervous about my Japanese but with Ena's help I got through it. Because we couldn't see it on TV I asked the reporter to take our picture in front of their microphone just to prove that we were there:
Anyway, that was the shrine part of the festival. After that we went to see the real attraction: Japanese Carnies!!!
When I use the word "Carnies" I have the spirit of the Austin Powers definition in mind:

"Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands."

Carnies have an interesting existence in Japan. They travel the length and breadth of the country (well, mostly the length, Japan is short on breadth) with whatever they sell or do in the back of their trucks and go from one festival to the other year-round. They are a mysterious people to the outsider like myself, living in a colorful world surrounded by gangsters, cheap gimmicks and ridiculously inflated prices. If ever there was a people whose lifestyle demanded a reality-TV show based on their lives, it is these folks.

Between Hakozaki Shrine and Route 3 there is a tree-lined avenue normally closed to vehicles that stretches for about a kilometre or so. Technically it is part of the shrine and during the Hojoya it is over-run by a massive herd of carnies who set up their stalls ("yatai") to ply their wares to the hundreds of thousands of visitors that come. This is one end of the avenue, from the Route 3 side with the giant tori gate:
And on the opposite end, from the shrine itself. The giant tori gate is so far off on the horizon you can't even see it:
Between these two points is Carny territory during the Hojoya. They provide all the fun bits of the festival experience that are what people REALLY come to see.
A lot of the more colorful (and photogenic) ones cater to kids. Like this one with Kamen Rider masks:
Or this one with girl's toys. Ena said she used to really like these when she was little:
Or this one selling something called "Character Pipes":
And flutes:
Looking for some surprisingly-realistic looking toy guns? This is your place:
A lot of the other yatai were games. Like this one where you try to catch balls floating in water:
Or you could try your hand with the giant vat of goldfish:
I'm not really a fan of the above type games. About 8 years ago at a similar festival in Himeji I tried one of these where the object was to scoop up a little turtle with this wafer-thin paper cup that would disintegrate virtually the second it came into contact with the water. I paid my 300 yen, confident that I had worked out a way to get the turtle succesfully out of the water and into the pail in the millisecond I had before the paper cup evaporated, dropping the turtle back into the water. And sure enough it worked! I got the turtle into the pail! I got to keep the turtle! Ena and all my friends with me were laughing and patting me on the back for a job well done when suddenly the guy running the thing yelled "Dame!" ("no good"), grabbed my pale and dumped the turtle back into the tank of water.

Incensed I demanded an explanation. "Your wrist was at the wrong angle. You had to keep it straight" he replied in the gruff voice of a man clearly making up the rules as he went along.

Suffice it to say I did not get my turtle. You may take the fact that 8 years later I am writing about the experience in a still-indignant tone as some indication of how pissed off I was at the time.

Anyway, I digress. Ena and I decided to pump some money into the economy by buying lunch at a falafal (how the hell do you spell that correctly?) yatai:
We then went to the main entertainment area where all the big games and attractions were.

The haunted houses looked pretty cool:
An old woman with a microphone exhorted the children to test their bravery at the hands of the ghosts and demons located up the ramp only 500 yen away. Two other staff, also old women, sat indifferently behind her with the distinct look of people who had other things they wanted to be doing:

Looking at the quality of the rides whose level of excitement could be gauged from direct observation, we opted to give the haunted houses a miss:
We worried that we would be committing some sort of faux-pas if we didn't throw money away at at least one of these places, so we decided to try our hand at one of the places where you throw darts at balloons:
Take THAT you stupid, yellow licensed character I see everywhere I go in this bloody country:
Ena also gave it a try:
We had 5 darts and missed with the first 4. It was down to me. I took careful aim and....POP! I got one! Excitedly I waited to be presented with one of the giant toys that bedecked every square inch of the stall not directly in the line of dart-throwing fire. Disappointingly he reached into a bucket out of sight under the counter and gave us two sticks that, he had to assure us as it was broad daylight, would glow in the dark:
Well, it was way better than that turtle yatai in Himeji 8 years ago.

After that we got some ice cream:
And wandered around some more of the yatai:
For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, in the only quiet part of the festival area a number of pottery dealers had set up shop:
I suspect they were there to give parents a sanctuary while the kids had fun.

After that we went home, as the rain was starting to come down. It was a fun day. A couple days later I snapped some photos of the festival in the dark as I passed by on my way home from downtown:

How not to Use a Japanese Toilet: A Sign that is Both Amusing and Disturbing at the Same Time

OK, to head off any potential avalanche of ridicule and whatever the internet version of suspicious glances are, let me preface this post with following disclaimer:

"Sean has never before in his life taken a photo in a public washroom nor will he ever do so again. He just happened to have his camera in his pocket when he entered the washroom down the hall from his office. The washroom was completely empty, and hardly a soul was in the entire building. He saw the above sign and thought it just HAD to be recorded and discussed on his blog. That is the ONLY reason he took out his camera in the washroom. Seriously."

That out of the way all I can say is: Oh my, how I did laugh when I saw this posted on the door to the Japanese-style toilet in the bathroom down the hall from my office.

Readers in the western world may not be familiar with the one aspect of Japan that, more than any other, strikes fear and terror into the hearts of foreigners here: the hole-in-the-floor squat toilet.

The first 3 years I lived in Japan I had the misfortune of working at places that only had these kinds of toilets. I just hated them. Within a few months I had scouted out alternative venues in nearby fast-food outlets and vowed never to use one of those....those.....those "things" ever again.

So anyway, that means I never use the toilet which has the above sign posted on it. I do, however, know that the sign didn't used to be there and seems to have only appeared in the past few days. I also know that I feel REALLY bad for the cleaning staff of my building, which hosts classes for foreign students studying the Japanese language during the week and I assume we have them (or at least ONE of them) to thank for the sign's existence. Suffice it to say that misusing the facilities in the way indicated in the picture with the red circle can have disastrous consequences. I do not want to know what the culminating incident was that drove the staff to put that sign up, but it was accompanied by a rather harshly-worded admonition that was obviously penned by someone who had been pushed past their limits. Whatever they are paying those people, it isn't enough.

Shoutengai and Kashii: The Bulldozer Comes to Higashi Ku

About a week ago I attended a conference in Nishijin, in the west part of Fukuoka. After the conference I headed off on bike for the hour-long ride back home in Higashi-Ku with Simon, a colleague of mine who had also ridden his bike. A few minutes into our journey the sky let loose a torrential downpour on us. Fortunately at that moment we were passing through Tojin-machi which, I knew, had a covered shopping arcade ("shoutengai" in Japanese) that we could take shelter under until the storm passed. We pedaled over and were fortunate enough to get there before the rain had completely soaked us.

The term "Shoutengai" refers to a shopping district or street which most towns and cities in Japan have. Here I'll use the word to refer specifically to shopping arcades, though in fact the word encompasses more than that. They are usually closed to vehicular traffic and lined with small shops. Often they run from a train station and are the centre of the town. Larger ones usually have a roof to shelter shoppers from the elements. The Tojin-machi Shoutengai is actually pretty small, running only a couple of blocks, but it did thankfully have a roof. This is what it looks like when it isn't raining:
We spent a few minutes at the entrance to the Tojin-machi Shoutengai waiting for the rain to let up, which it didn't. Coming to grips with the fact that we would have to make the remaining 50-odd minutes of our return trip in the rain, we decided to venture into the bowels of the Shoutengai searching for a shop where we could buy something cheap. Our purpose was to obtain a plastic shopping bag with our purchase and use that bag (we hoped to get one each) to put our wallets and papers into so as to keep them dry.

The Shoutengai meandered along with a fair number of flower shops, fish shops and other places selling things that we didn't really want to carry home in the rain with us. Finally we came across a supermarket which, we noticed, had a plastic bag dispenser near the front doors for customers to put things that might melt into. We realized those would be perfect for our purposes. We stood outside the supermarket, in front of a small fish mongers place and mulled how we might go about acquiring one of those bags without making a purchase.

As we did so our conversation turned towards the shoutengai itself. Being an expert on competition law, Simon was a bit conflicted about shoutengai in general. "From an economic standpoint, they are grossly inefficient" he explained as we looked at the fish monger, which hadn't had a single customer in the 10 minutes or so we had been standing there. "A lot of them really only survive thanks to favorable tax treatment they get from the government." The competition expert in him was displeased with this.

"Still though" he continued, looking at all the shoppers bustling around the colorful and vibrant street, "THIS is Japan." Despite their inefficiency, shoutengai are really the hearbeat of any city, and as the fortunes of the shoutengai go, so go the fortunes of the city.

Around Japan these days, a lot of factors are contributing to the decline of the shoutengai. Go through any small city and you are likely to find shoutengai with half their shops permanently shuttered, victims of depopulation, the general stagnation of the nation's economy, competition from big box stores and the growth of more car-dependent suburbs sucking the lifeblood out of the town centres. Its hard to tell which of these, if any, exerts a bigger influence on their declining importance, but a dying shoutengai is a gut-wrenchingly sad thing to see.

In the eastern part of Fukuoka not far from my place a number of shoutengai are under threat, though primarily from a different cause from those listed above. These shoutengai, in the area around Kashii, are threatened by a city plan to redevelop on a massive scale a few square kilometres of Higashi-ku centering around the Kashii and Chihaya areas. For readers who can read Japanese some details of the plans are on the city website here. The plan basically involves clearing huge swaths of the city south of route three and replacing it with a centrally planned, "modern" city made up mostly of high rise apartment buildings. Implementation of the plan is about half way through. Some parts have already been cleared and had new structures built, particularly around Chihaya station (which itself was built as part of the plan). A lot of the land around there was formerly railway lines, which made it easy to clear and also a relatively good place to re-develop. Some of it, however, was old residential and business areas near route 3 and in the past two years I've watched these slowly being torn down and replaced with new buildings.

Other parts of the development area have just been demolished and are sitting vacant. The area around JR Kashii station, however, contains the last vestiges of pre-demolition neighborhood left in the area. It has the look of an island of the old world under seige on all sides by massive machinery tearing the city scape apart all around it. Today I took a bike ride around the whole project area to contrast and compare the various zones and record Kashii's shoutengai area.

Japan is often said to be a land of stark contrasts, and nowhere is this more true than in Kashii today. My trip starts on Route three, the northern border of the new development. You can see the high rise apartments going up at break-neck speed around here:
The little houses in the foreground are in the development's area and will inevitably be demolished in the near future. When we moved here two years ago there were lots of similar houses and smaller buildings here, but these are some of the last holdouts in this area.
Not far away on route three a couple of shops stand shuttered and awaiting demolition:
A sign in the window of a beauty salon announces that the business has moved:
I pause to note that as I was taking this picture I heard the sound of a horn blaring behind me and then a loud "CRASH". I spun around and was faced with this intriguing sight:
This was taken within 3 or 4 seconds of the collision itself. Its not often that you can take one look at a car accident and immediately know who was at fault just by the sight of it, but this was one of those times. This is a six lane highway. This was nowhere near an intersection or any place where you might expect drivers to get confused and take a wrong turn or anything. Yet of course only one of the cars in the above picture was headed in the correct direction in the MIDDLE lane of east-bound traffic. That was the car on the left. The driver of the car on the right somehow managed to find himself driving the wrong way on an insanely busy highway a couple of hundred metres from the nearest intersection. The driver of the car on the left was not happy and within a few seconds of my taking this picture was out of his car and yelling at the other guy. I didn't stick around long enough to find out how the idiot in the car on the right had gotten himself into that predicament, curious though I was.

Anyway, turning off Route three I cycle along until I reach Miyuki Dori in Kashii, a quiet little shotengai that seems to cater mainly to middle aged women (judging by the fashions in the clothing stores):
Crossing a bridge Miyuki Dori turns into Kira Kira Dori, which is much the same:
Vegetable shops thrive on Shoutengai like these:
Leaving Kira Kira Dori we come to Nishitetsu Kashii station, behind which we find what must be the most "rustic" shoutengai in Fukuoka, Kashii Chuo Shotengai:
It does boast a roof, of sorts:
At the far end of Kashii Chuo Shotengai we see how far the bulldozers have gotten in razing the town on the eastern fringe of the development area:
Seeing this makes me a bit concerned about the fate of the Kashii shoutengai. Nowhere in the city's plans does it specifically say "we'll be tearing down Miyuki Dori, Kira Kira Dori and Kashii Chuo Shotengai and replacing them with shopping malls." Signs around Miyuki Dori indicate that it will survive. But one gets the sense that these places aren't the type of "vision" that city planners have for this neighborhood, at least if what has been built elsewhere in the development zone is anything to go by. Ramshackle Kashii Chuo Shoutengai - which I find to be the most charming place in Kashii - definitely has the look of something which development projects like this are specifically designed to get rid of. In fact they've already kind of started that process on the part of Kashii Shoutengai which isn't covered by the roof. These are what the original buildings look like, very colorful and slap-dash:
But the buildings across the street from them have been replaced by a new strip mall type building (on the right):
I appreciate that the strip mall building is cleaner and probably has other benefits which go with newer buildings. At the same time though, it lacks all of the color of the original buildings on the left. Its plastic, beige facade is no match for the multi-colored awnings on the old buildings. Its entrances, recessed from the street and a couple of steps up from it, are much colder and less inviting than the ones on the left, which open directly onto the street and have a much more intimate feel to them. I suspect that in a few years this whole street will unfortunately look like the building on the right while the ones on the left will be history.

Anyway, after leaving Kashii Chuo Shotengai I reach the main street leading up to JR Kashii station:
Its a fairly colorful street:
The station itself isn't particularly attractive:
But I like the fact that it opens right up onto this busy, tree-lined shopping street:
Under the current plans pretty much all of this area in front of the station is going to be torn down and turned into a "hiroba" which might generously be translated as "Town square." When you see what they've done in the stations they've already redeveloped below, you'll understand why I view this plan with some trepidation.

Perhaps in preparation for the inevitable demolition, the "Pachinko Empire" parlor sits abandoned in front of the station:
The side streets around Kashii station are fun to ride around with an "eclectic" mix of architecture and loads of small shops and restaurants:
Signs proudly announcing the redevelopment are to be found everywhere. "The making of a new Kashii town is proceeding!" the sign says along the top. They use the phrase "machi zukuri" which I would unflatteringly translate as "gentrification" though it literally means "town making":
The new development won't have any place for green buildings like this though:
One of Kashii's "hidden Shoutengai" that I peeped into. The red sign says that it is a shortcut to Kashii station and, in fact, I can confirm that it is:
It looks abandoned but actually all the shops are snacks and bars which only open at night:
There are some peculiarities within the development zone where they have cleared some land and kind of started to redevelop it but haven't gotten very far, like with these 4 trees recently planted in the middle of a vacant lot:
Not sure what that'll be when they finish with it. Some kind of park I guess.

Now I head west towards Nishitetsu Kashii Miyamae station, which has already been fully "redeveloped":
If there was ever a poster-child for poor urban planning, this station would win hands down. It is a piece of crap. I have no other word to describe it. None that would better convey the hostility I feel towards this station at any rate. When you exit the station you are met with this stunning vista of bleakness provided by the unnecesarily large, shadeless, grey "public space" they've created in front of it:
On the left a lovely parking lot:
Next to that an endless expanse of asphalt and concrete for commuters to walk through:
And dead ahead the parking lot of a pachinko parlour and some department stores whose facades and entrances face away from the station:
It seems every development of this kind in Japan is bestowed with a few trees that are planted and then forgotten and left to die:
Remember that nice picture up above of Kashii station which opens up onto the bustling shopping area lined with nice trees that can be easily walked to? They want to demolish that and replace it with ugly crap similar to this (if the artists depictions on the city's website are accurate at least). It is not at all encouraging.

Onwards I press, passing by a huge stretch of land that has been cleared for development:
I arrive at Chihaya station, which has also been cheerfully redeveloped into a dead grey zone devoid of any detectable human activity:
They have at least started to build a park across the street that despite having mature trees somehow manages to exude greyness and gloom about as well as a parking lot does:
Thousands of square metres of land waiting to be turned into more of the same:
Back on route three, this building was one of the last holdouts. It had a keysmith and the Yomiuri newspaper's distribution centre until it closed at the end of last month:
This house though is still occupied and still holding out. Why I don't know but I think its by far the prettiest place in Kashii, with that golden rooster metal advert on the wall:
So that is the state of Kashii today and a glimpse at the possible unpleasant demise of its shoutengai (at least as they exist today). To be honest, after looking at the city plans I'm not sure how much of what I've photographed above in Kashii will be demolished and how much will be incorporated into the new Kashii, though I suspect very little of what is there today will survive the coming years. I have to admit that some of the new apartment buildings around Chihaya look like comfortable places to live, but the new neighborhoods as a whole are just completely devoid of any of the character that old Kashii - despite the admittedly ramshackle appreance of many of its buildings - exudes. Even the parks in the new area look grey and depressing.

To return to the anecdote with which I began this post, Simon and I did eventually get our plastic bags from the supermarket. Our effort was made possible by the connivance of an elderly woman who was standing next to the dispenser who knew exactly what we were up to, having watched us as we spent several minutes mulling over what to do in front of the fish mongers. "What a good idea" she said with a wry smile to Simon as he tried to nonchalantly grab one of the bags "those'll keep your books dry." And with that she was off, popping open her umbrella, hopping onto her bike and pedaling away into the rain in a flash as though she had just been sticking around the whole time to see whether we'd actually make our move or not. It was the type of encounter that one typically has in old type shoutengai like the ones in Tojin-machi or Kashii. You could wait a thousand years and still not see that sort of spontaneous communication occur between strangers in the asphalt belt that surrounds Nishitetsu Kashii Miyamae station though.