Shochu Street is an advertising campaign put on by the local distillers to promote the new releases using the year's new rice and sweet potato harvests. It ran from Nov. 1st to the 3rd, partially overlapping with the Ohara Dance festival on the 2nd and 3rd. I had to work Thursday until 6 PM, and the official opening ceremonies weren't scheduled to start until 7 PM, so I went to Mos Burger for some coffee to kill the time. When I got back out, the politicians and promoters were just finishing their speeches. Oddly, there were close to two hundred people in the plaza in front of 7-11 watching this, and I have no idea how many of those were press camera people. I was trying to figure out how to get a clear view of the stage to take a photo when the talking ended, and the politicans walked off. The second that happened, all the camera people disappeared, just leaving a fraction of the crowd of people there to do the real drinking.
The MC spent most of her time telling people how to drink shochu (mix it with hot or cold water, or on the rocks). Seriously, these people have teaching videos on how to pour alcohol into a glass of hot water.
One of the distillers really wanted people to know about his brand.
The main entertainment Thursday night was a "talk show" with a Kagoshima United soccer player, and one of the 2016 Olympics swimming event bronze medalists. Basically, it was just the MC asking a few softball questions and then letting the guests ramble.
Yes, the plaza was crazy crowded.
Why bring a camper to a shochu event?
Japan has the cutest little port-a-potties in the world!
I ended up running into two guys I know and hadn't seen in close to a year. One is an American who works as a baker for a place that makes Japanese-style steamed cakes, and the other is a Frenchman working as a chef in one of the restaurants in Tenmonkan nearby. (Note that you had to buy tickets for the shochu, 500 yen for 5 cups.) We tried different shochus and caught up on what everyone is doing, then with the announcements that the booths would be closing at 8, we split up to spend the last of our tickets.
There were a couple of odd moments along the way. When the three of us were still together, a camera woman came up and introduced herself as belonging to the shochu promotional society, and she wanted to know if we'd be willing to let her take our photos and post them on the society website. We said yes, and I still haven't been able to find where the photos are supposed to be now. I should have asked for a business card or something.
The second thing was that I'd gone to the new brews table to find something to spend my last ticket on. As I was standing there, an older Japanese guy started asking me where I'm from, if I like shochu, and so on. He was wearing a business suit, looked like he was in his 70's or 80's, was almost as tall as me, and had a little pin in his lapel that I think marked him as a politician. Now, I really wish I'd gotten that photo of the people at the opening ceremonies, because for all I know, I may have been talking to the governor of Kagoshima, or the head of the shochu society, or something.
Anyway, things ended after 8 PM, so I went home for dinner.
For several days during the week, my allergies had been acting up, giving me a runny nose and fluid build up in the back of my throat that led to some very heavy coughing. The result of this was that the coughing began to rip out my throat, making it harder to talk. I could survive this on Thursday, when I was shouting to be overheard over the crowd. I had a few classes Friday morning and afternoon, and the students commented on how much I sounded like I had a bad cold. My voice kept cracking when I had to talk louder, but again, I could survive this.
However, around 6 PM as I was preparing to eat dinner before getting ready to revisit Shochu Street before heading to Ohara Matsuri, my voice gave out entirely. I wasn't exactly at the laryngitis stage, but with 4 classes to teach on Saturday, I feared the worst. I started drinking lots of vitamin C, and hot water with honey, and generally just trying to do everything I could to protect my throat. That included not drinking shochu on Friday or Saturday.
Anyway, the only live events on the Shochu Street stage on Friday were two female vocalists, neither that I really had any interest in. I took a photo of the above woman as she was doing a karaoke pop song over a recorded CD, then kept going to Ohara (to be continued tomorrow).
No comments:
Post a Comment