yabusame - traditional horseback archery

Saturday we headed off to Tokyo, Sumida ward to watch the Yabusame.

Yabusame is the traditional art of horseback archery, we have seen it before, a few years ago but in a different location.

Unfortunately this place was difficult to get a good spot to watch, all the good places were paid seats, so I recommend the November show if you are planning to see it.

The contenders are dressed in traditional garb, some from the Kamakura period and then some from the later Eno period....

I remembered this horse from last time..

To start with, I was only getting photos of the back of the womans head who was stood in front of me, so I handed my camera over to Ebi-kun since he has managed to sneak to the front...if only he was a little taller!

The ladies who were in the way left after a while, so I snagged a good spot eventually...

Just taken the shot...

And pulling the next arrow for the next target, they have to hit three targets each run...

The archers these days have to be much quicker, the old samurai horses would have been smaller and slower but these days they use European bred horses which are faster and it means that the archers lose a second between targets...

It's quite exciting but it takes them forever to get going. It was scheduled to start at 1pm but they didn't actually start the archery until nearly 2pm. A lot of of waffling and ceremonial stuff, not interesting if you can't see what is going on!

Day Tripping to Gyoda for magatama, jelly fry and Samurai

We had fun on Monday (yes, I know it has taken me all week to get the post up, these 4 day weeks are playing havoc with my routine!) Anyway, we went up to Gyoda, which is about an hours drive away. There are some burial mounds and a small museum plus a castle. 

We started at the museum and joined a class to make a magatama. They are a type of necklace carved from stone, originally they were good luck charms made from bears teeth but over the years the shape stayed the same but the material it was made from changed. 

You buy a kit which was about ¥500, you can choose from pink, white or black stone, matching stone bead and there is a choice of string too. You also get 2 types of sandpaper. The class provides everything else.

First we drew around the template and then we had to drill a hole, the traditional way - well using mostly traditional tools, they did have a modern drill bit attached to the end!

Then the rest was the sanding, daddy took a black stone, this is harder than the others, Ebi-kun picked white and I did pink. We started off with the coarse sandpaper in a tray of water and sanded the rock down to the basic shape. Then we switched to the finer sandpaper to get it nice and smooth. The final thing was to polish it with felt. There was a bead included in the kit too, so we sanded that to make it smooth too.

Everyone was really proud of their finished masterpieces!

After the class we had a look inside one of the burial mounds, this is the only mound in Japan that you can actually go inside. They have a TV feed set up so you can see the real body and belongings and then this replica. In Ebi-kuns words "It stinks in here"!

After all that we were ready for lunch, we found a pleasant little restaurant 5 minutes walk from the museum, we all wanted to try the local dish "Jelly Fry", OK, I was a bit apprehensive, they eat some weird shit over here! But it was delicious, it was actually fried mashed potato and veg, tasted a bit like bubble and squeak. It got it's name because it looks like old Japanese coins and the word got changed along the way - or something like that! If you go, try them or make them yourself, there is a recipe here.

After lunch we headed Oshi Castle. It is, like many in Japan a replica. It's not in my top ten of sight seeing places, but OK for an afternoon out. It is very old school in the layout, precious things in glass cases, pretty boring for kids and those who don't read Japanese. I spent most of the time walking round deciding what changes I would make if I ran the place to make it more exciting! 

They did have a couple of Samurai wandering around and answering questions, as well as posing for the camera.

After a wander round the grounds we headed home, yet another fun filled day!

Next Monday Ebi-kun is off again because it's undokai tomorrow - the sports festival, it is such a big thing here. I am off to the supermarket to stock up on bento supplies...