OrpheusGrey

Chusei Yumegahara is a re-creation of an medieval, Edo period, Japanese village. It's exactly like Colonial Williamsburg, though neither colonial nor Williamsburg.

We went with all the new JETs in Okayama-ken, as a finale to our 3 day training session. It didn't have anything to do with training, nor was there any teamwork skills that needed building, as we all work seperately in seperate schools around the prefecture. But we had a good time.

We had a nice walk around the village, ate bento (pre-prepared box lunch) for lunch, then tried our hand at some traditional Japanese crafts. Some tried indigo dyeing and taketombo (wooden toy whirly-gigs), but we tried wooden top throwing. It was difficult, and there are no pictures of this. Basically you wind a string up around a spinning top, hold it in the air above your head, then throw towards the ground. If you release it correctly, the rope unwinds and the top lands spinning swiftly on the ground. If two people can do this then they can battle their tops. We couldn't find two people in our group that could learn how to do it.

After the little activities we were treated to a demonstration of traditional Kagura dancing. All I know about it is that it is dancing, accompanied by rhythmic drumming and chanting, that tells a story that takes almost 14 hours to complete. They condensed it to one for us gaijin. Basically they introduced 3 of the most well-known characters from the story, then performed one of the more climactic scenes wherein a Samurai lord discovers a serpent in his storehouses that has gotten drunk on his best sake. They fight and he destroys the serpent.

Oh, and we also got dressed up in ridiculous period-clothing. Jenn looks pretty good as a farmer, but I couldn't really pull off ninja. I wanted the samurai outfit, but it was taken. Please, have a good laugh.