Fire Festival

A few weeks ago, I went to a fire festival. One of the other JETs was hiking in the woods behind his house, and he came across a little shrine. The old woman who worked there (doesn't this sound like something out of a fairy tale? I can't believe this is my life...) told him there was a festival at night, so we all hiked up the hill in the dark with our flashlights. I was expecting a festival like the last few I went to, with a lot of people milling around, food stands and children in kimono. But this was completely different. It was a small gathering, maybe 50 or 60 people, and they held an actual ceremony (whether it was Buddhist or Shinto, we couldn't figure out). Up some steps off the main road, there was a raised enclosure, fenced off by a red wooden paddock-like fence, at one end of which there were some more stairs that led up to a dais, covered by a pointed wooden roof, where there was incense burning and lots of statues of buddhas and things. On either side of this, there was a steep stone staircase leading up into the hill, and at the top of each side was a miniature shrine. The stone staircases, like the enclosure below, were lined with candles. It was really beautiful. The enclosure was walled in on all sides by dark trees. 

The ceremony lasted maybe 30 t0 45 minutes, consisted of a lot of chanting and was led by a group of men and women in white robes. At one point they formed processions and climbed the candle-lined stairs to the little shrines, chanting all the way. Lined up inside the enclosure were about a dozen braziers, about five and a half feet tall, stuffed with kindling. After the service was over, the priests lit the braziers literally by pouring sake over them and lighting a match, and everyone took these little bundles of kindling wood with names written on them, and put them one by one into the fire. Some women told us that it is to help send these people, who have died, to heaven. They gave us some of the sticks to help put in the fire. 

It was a unique experience. The one bad moment was when we were all standing around before the service started. Some guy came up to us and offered us what looked like shish-kebab, like beef on a stick, and we couldn't very well refuse it. I took one bite of it and thought I was going to be sick. It was gelatinous and covered with some weird seedy jelly. It was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. I figured it was some weird paste, until I overheard my Lee say to Lana that it was raw meat. At which point I really thought I would be sick. Luckily Lana was nice enough to eat mine for me. As it turns out (I only found out an hour later, after obsessing over the disgusting fact that I had eaten raw meat) Lee was joking, it was not meat after all. I was not pleased with him...

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