Japan Is Doomed

Dinner was over. We were tired, confused and a little nauseated from eating something that was alive ten minutes ago. Infact, if it's ok with you guys, we'd really just like to head to bed now.

No chance. It was time to go and watch the youth of Atami practicing their traditional drumming (Wodaiku) in time for their festival. For some reason practice took part in a warehouse used to store rice. The idea is there's one guy with a huge drum and lots of kids hitting little drums in time. From the standpoint of a spectator it looks fantastic, especially towards the end when they get faster and faster. If someone makes a mistake, their Japanese "I've let the entire team down" sense goes into overdrive and they stop in disgust, even if the mistake wasn't actually noticeable. Still, generally the kids didn't make many mistakes.

What you can't see were the three other teenagers playing traditional wooden flutes to accompany the drummers. Now I can understand that it's age old tradition and the children are proud of their heritage and so on and so forth, but seriously guys get those flutes fixed. They sound like recorders being played underwater through a really loud speaker. Not only that, the song was practiced about six times while we were there, it's about 4 minutes long, and throughout most of the song it's the same melody repeated over and over. Needless to say I have developed an irrational hatred of flutes.

Anyway, as I said, to the audience it looks like the drumming is pretty simple. This common misconception can be removed by having a go at it. It's really, really hard. When you're standing next to other people who are in time it becomes painfully obvious you're out of time.

The girl standing next to me in the final picture tried her hardest to keep me in time, singing a little tune for me to keep in time to. It's not just keeping in time, either. You have to lift your left drumstick up high on the 9th beat of every section of the tune. But if you raised it up too far, too quickly or hit the drum too loudly you're doing it wrong. Imagine threading a needle whilst riding a motorbike. Now imagine doing it with drumsticks and giggling Japanese teenagers. It's not easy.

Once we had failed miserably to uphold the honor of Atami's ancestors, we were finally granted our wish of sleep. First though, we went back to the onsen to get naked just one more time, just in case we didn't get third degree burns the first time. Again, I decided not to take my camera as I quite enjoy not being in jail.

Finally then we hit the hay, and it was the softest, nicest hay I've ever hit. The futons we've had provided by the school are thin, old and a bit horrible. These ones were about three times as thick, and also really fresh. It was the best night's sleep I think I've had so far in my time in Japan. If futons weren't so expensive I would seriously consider buying one as it was so refreshing to sleep until my alarm went off, rather than waking up at 2am, 3am, 3.05am, 6am and 7am.

We were due to leave Atami the next day at about midday. First however we had to get through a traditional breakfast.

That's right. At 8.30am I ate fish, deep fried eggs mixed with incredibly strong sauce, chestnuts and something called Umeboshi, which is incredibly bitter and sour plum. It was the heaviest breakfast I've ever eaten and afterwards I didn't feel like eating for about three weeks afterwards.

Once that was over we were taken up the hillside to try to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. Sadly the clouds were out in force and we couldn't get a great shot of it, but this is what we ended up with;

After we came back down from the viewing point it was time to head back to Tokyo, with absoloutly no doubt that we would be returning to Atami again this year. It's such a different place to Tokyo, it feels like a different country. If you ever come to Japan get out of Tokyo at least once. There's a world of difference between Tokyo and the rest of Japan.