Long time no update! This one is really long and moderately interesting

The Easter bunny came!

This morning (Easter morning) I got up and headed to the grocery to get some food for lunch. In our mailbox, someone had left 2 Cadbury Eggs. :) How nice of someone! I don't know who left them, but I have my suspicions! I already ate my egg. It was tasty (but SWEEEEET). Hooray! And Happy Easter to all of you at home.

Yesterday was the big parade. I will put pictures in my photobucket account soon and then edit and link you to the page. It was really cool. We dressed up in "fuedal" Japanese armor and marched down the street. I was a woman warrior (onnamusha). We had ugly costumes. They were turquoise and peach. I don't know why. There were also spear men, archers, rifle men,
hand maidens, samurai, generals, colonels, princesses, and a lord. Some guys got to ride horses and there was a big wagon with an ox/cow pulling it. So nifty looking. We've been practicing for 3 months now (actually, I only went to two practices because really...how much do you need to practice walking slowly?).

Actually doing the parade was less cool. I am positive that within the next few weeks, the really sucky parts of the parade will fade and I will be left with the coolness of it. I got there at 7:30 in the morning and put in armor. This was a HUGE blow to my self esteem because the armor is one size fits all, but I am no where near Japanese shaped so they had to jimmy-rig it to get it to stay on. There were leg things that we had to wear, and while it fit on one leg, they had to tie it on my other leg because my leg was too big (however, not because it's fat! I will get to that in a moment). The armor was moderately comfortable in the beginning. The problem was that you could NOT go to the bathroom in it. Like, when I got there at 7:30, the lady who was to dress me told me to go to the bathroom, because I would not get a chance to go until the armor came off. That is kinda miserable.

So I got dressed by 8:00 and headed out to a gymnasium to wait. There...we waited from 8:00 to 10:50 to get bussed over to the parade site. Why did we have to get ready so early then? *sigh* Who knows. I think they just wanted to make sure everyone was ready in time. There were about 300 people participating in the parade and EVERYONE had complicated costumes to wear. But still, there were enough people dressing us and helping that we could have gotten there at 9:00 and been fine. Well, the hand-maiden outfits and make-up probably needed to take a long time because it was make-up and wig intensive. But the rest of us would be ok. It only took me 30 minutes to get ready and that took so long because they put the wrong armor on me and when they went to put the right armor on, they had to fix the straps to make it able to fit me.

We got to the parade site at 11:00 (they actually were bussing us over in groups and for some reason, my stupid group was second to last and that's why we waited so long. They started bussing at 10:00). There, we waited for the parade to start. I think it was more of a photo op for people. There were people everywhere taking pictures of everyone. We all did look amazing. At the parade site, they finally armed us. We had a Katana strapped to our left side (katana = Japanese style sword) and a naginata held in our right hand (naginata = polearm with a long curved blade on the end). Don't worry! It was made from wood and really much lighter than I was anticipating.

At 12:00 they lined us up in parade order. There was a speech that we couldn't hear because we were pretty far away when all lined up. We were pretty much in the middle of the procession. We stood and waited for a pretty long time.

I guess now I should pause and tell you about the parade. It just occured to me that I haven't actually talked about it before. The parade was in Matsue. 300 volunteers (we signed up in January) were accepted and we were dressed as warriors from about 400 years ago. This parade was supposed to be a recreation of the old processions that used to take place whenever a lord/landholder/daimyou (whatever you want to call him) was instructed to go to Tokyo. Chris chose not to participate. He decided he had enough of parades from doing marching band and would rather just take pictures (which was really a good thing). There were special tryouts to be one of two princesses, the landlord's wife, the landlord, the prince (5 year old boy) and a few other people. I actually tried out for the princess but they were going for authenticity for these people and I am not very Japanese princess-looking. About 20 other foreigners volunteered to be in the parade as well.

Ok, so back to the day of the parade. So we lined up at 12:00 and waited to hear the signal to start. The signal was for the guy playing the lord would yell the orders to head out and then they would blow the conch shells (for real yo, they had conch shells!) and then the music would start and we would march. That happened at 12:50. Because it was such a long line and such a slow pace we were to take (we were to take a step once every 3 or 4 seconds!), we didn't actually move from our spot for another 20 minutes!

I'm guess the parade route was 2 km long. It took us until 2:30 before we ended up at the Mastue Castle. During the middle of the parade, we stopped marching on an old bridge and did a dance-routine thing with our weapons. I sucked at it! My excuse is this, we had to wear old fashion Japanese style sandals which are essentially flat, vaguely foot-shaped soles made of woven straw and wrapped around your feet and ankles with rope. These were very uncomfortable AND slippery on pavement. Since we (the woman warrior group) were the last group that was to dance (other groups didn't have to) and on a bridge and I was in the back line of our group, I was on an incline. I kept slipping down the bridge when I would take a step back. Very difficult. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Anyways, we marched those 2 km and got to the castle at 2:30. Chris had basically followed the parade the whole way taking pictures and met us at our stopping point in the castle gates. It was funny because we started with the slow, slow march but by the end, the drummers sped up the beat and we were actually marching a more normal speed. I think we were running out of time.

When we got to the parade end, we were instructed to wait. You see, this was another photo op for people. Anyone who wanted, could ask to take pictures. And many many people took pictures. We were also supposed to wait for big group pictures. At 3:30 they had a closing ceremony. At 3:45 my group photo was taken and I was finally allowed to go back and change out of the armor. By this time, the moderately comfortable armor was super uncomfortable. There were several sashes tied tightly around me and my back was just aching. The shoes weren't much like shoes at all and it felt like we walked all that way barefoot except for the rope stuck between our toes (they were designed like thongs, though we did have socks with split toes so we could wear socks). My arm ached from carry the naginata in the same position for 2 hours.

And I had to pee. >.<

However, I will take the time to mention that my group was very fortunate with the costumes. We had the lightest armor (except for the hand-maidens who didn't wear any armor) and the fabric of our costume was a light material that let air move through and kept us cool. Other people had some heavy heavy armor. I am willing to say that they were probably way more uncomfortable than I was. Some guys even had huge helmets! Poor guys (we had headbands with a metal strip in the front that kinda hurt, but it was just a headband and not too bad).

At 4:00, I was finally back at the gym and able to change. Every layer that I took off felt so wonderful. My legs were killing me. I was also parched since I didn't drink any all day and I hadn't eaten anything all day. I got dressed and Chris picked me up at 4:15. What a long day! Do the math! I went from 7:30 to 4:15 without going to the bathroom once. I didn't eat, didn't drink, and wore uncomfortable and ill-fitting costumes for that time. It was actually quite miserable. Everyone was very good sports about it (even me) though. Because it was a special thing to do. And like I said, I'm sure the miserable parts will start to fade and only the coolness of it will remain.

But still...you guys should give me mad props. You know me very well and my fear of not being able to go to the bathroom. Almost 9 HOURS without going to the bathroom even once! I did very good.

When we headed home, we stopped at a convenience store and got two bottles of water (Chris was hot and tired as well, since he stayed with the parade and walked a lot) and some chips for something to eat. I downed one bottle in a matter of minutes. I don't think I have ever been so thirsty in my life.

We got home at 5:00 and my intentions were nothing but to nap for a bit. So Chris and I took a nap for an hour. When we got up at 6:00 I found out why my right leg wouldn't fit in the leg-armor thing. We had a practice on Friday night. It was the last practice. I stretched my right calf funny when I took a step. I felt the muscle spasm and it started to hurt. Turns out, I pulled a muscle so my leg was swollen. Ahhhhh. It all makes sense! However, I didn't realize that at the time of the parade yesterday morning. I thought I just had a cramp. This was unfortunate, because I ended up walking on my pulled muscle for many hours and pulled it even worse! When I got up from my nap, I could barely move my leg it hurt. However, I got up and stretched a bit and it felt better. But I was relieved to figure out that my right leg wasn't just hugely obese...it was just swollen! :)

Today, my leg is still ouchy. But it's livable. I do have a large bruise on the back where I pulled the muscle but it's probably just a small strain and walking on it yesterday so much aggravated it. How silly!

Since I had a practice on Friday night and Chris wasn't in the parade, he dropped me off and found the import grocery store. Oh my gosh! We have been having the tastiest meals these past couple of days. Last night, we had chili-cheese dogs! Aiiyeee! It was heavenly! It's been so long since we had chili. Chris found chili in the import store (both with and without beans). Hormel chili too! And then today for lunch I had a ham sandwich. But wait...I had a ham sandwich...with Helmen's Mayonnaise! OH! It was so so so very good. Japanese mayonnaise is very, very vinegary and not much like American mayonnaise at all. It's not bad, but it took some getting used to. But Chris surprised me with mayonnaise and it was divine. It took my regular ham sandwich and kicked it up a notch!

Chris also bought tortillas (because the store that had them in Izumo stopped selling them because they hate us and are evil), barbecue sauce, refried beans, and nacho topping. The import store is a fabulous find and something we will take advantage of for our remaining time here.

Today we went to hanami. Hanami is a huge tradition in Japan where you go and have a picnic underneath the cherry trees. A lot of other ALTs were going to meet up in a park and we would picnic together. Chris and I didn't really want to picnic but we figured we would meet them for a bit and visit. We have some really pretty pictures of the trees and different groups eating. It's the last real day of cherry blossom viewing so it wasn't that busy. Again, I will put the pictures in my photobucket soon. When we got there, two other ALTs had beat us and been invited to another group's picnic. While it was extremely nice of them to want to share their food with us, I was really disappointed that we merged picnics. It was my intention to relax and spend time with people I haven't seen much lately (being vacation time, everyone has been off doing their own thing). But sharing with a Japanese group, it made it feel like work. Like we had to entertain them. It really really felt like a work party and not like a time to relax and enjoy that sakura (cherry trees). Oh well, Chris and I left after about an hour so it was all good. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the sharing and stuff. It was nice to meet those guys but just not my thing.

And I think that's it! If you are wondering why I haven't posted about Will being here and his trip it's because of this: what we did with Will, was what we did with everyone who visited. I've talked about it before and just posting about seeing Taisha or going to restaurants seems repetitive and boring. It's actually why I haven't updated in so long. I just had no energy to write about something I've already spoken about three times before. Just know it was wonderful having him here. I think he had a lot of fun and an interesting time. I know we had a good time. He got here safely and returned home safely. It was an all around good trip.

I know this was a super long entry, but I figured I could get away with it with doing the parade and all. I hope you enjoyed it!

Edit: Pictures!
Mastue Parade
Hanami