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Happy New (School) Year! Summer vacation may now officially be over for most Phoenix kids, but I’m not ready to break out the pumpkin spice quite yet. Therefore, I will stay in Japan (mentally at least) for a little bit longer. Right before I left Japan, I had a chance to visit the Ichinomiya Tanabata Matsuri. If you’ve read TANABATA WISH, you know that I send Sky, Ryouhei (David), and friends to this romantic festival celebrating star-crossed lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi. For the book, I had to tweak the date to make sure it fit in with my story’s timeline. The festival is actually held near the end of July when Japanese kids go on summer vacation. In today’s behind-the-scenes post, I have pictures to illustrate parts of the Tanabata Matsuri chapter. In the scene below, Sky, Ryouhei, and friends have just stepped off the bus and entered the matsuri (festival) area.
“Waaaah!” I say as we walk underneath the bright orangey-red tori gate and onto the festival’s main street. It’s like stepping into the middle of a rotating kaleidoscope. Tons of people—many wearing yukata—cram the sidewalk. A wall of smell washes over me—sweet and smoky and salty and fishy.
Above our heads are huge piñata-like decorations with streamers hanging down like jellyfish tentacles. Some of them barely miss my head.
After the teens have some fun festival foods (more on that later), they come to the Shinto shrine attached to the festival. Like at all shrines, there is a fountain at the front.
"It's quiet here. Peaceful. Emi stops at a rectangular stone fountain where a Chinese-style dragon squirts water out of its open mouth. The four of us stand side-by-side. I follow Emi's lead. I pick up the bamboo ladle in front of me, let some of the dragon's water pour into it, and then wash both of my hands. I'm glad to do this because my hands are sticky from the kakigouri.
"Now we are...eto?" Emi says.
"Not sticky?" I say.
"Purified," Hiro says.
"Yes, purified. Now we can go to shrine." Emi wipes her hands on a Hello Kitty handkerchief-washcloth-thingie before tucking it back into her drawstring bag.
The teens split up into couples for a little bit. Sky comes to join Ryouhei (David) who has bought a fortune paper at the shrine like he and his grandfather used to do.
"Hey, what's that?" I slide onto the bench next to David.
"An omikuji--a fortune-telling paper. It's nothing." David wads up the small rectangle of paper with printing all over it and crams it in his pocket.
"Hey, choudai." I put out my hand and tell him to give it to me.
David pulls it back out of his pocket and unwads it. He smooths it out on his thigh and then hands it to me.
"What does it say?" I can't read any of the kanji on the paper.
"No clue."
"Then why'd you get it?"
"Habit. It's something Ojiichan used to do every time we'd pass a shrine. Obaachan is superstitious, too, but Ojiichan was kind of over the top about it. He once spent 2000-yen, about twenty bucks, on omikuji until he got a good fortune.
I look at the paper closer. "So, is this a good fortune or not?"
"Good. Probably. I think this kanji means 'blessing,' but I can't remember."
"Now what do you do with it?"
"If it's good, you're supposed to take it with you. If it's bad, you're supposed to leave it behind." David points to where there are tons of pieces of paper tied with a single knot to a piece of wire.
"Sugoi!" Emi suddenly squeals from behind us. She leans between David and me and points to two kanji near the middle. "David-kun, you have dai-kichi, great blessing. You are so lucky."
[Spoiler alert: David takes the fortune paper with him, and it comes in handy later in the story.]
Want to see how these scenes connect together in TANABATA WISH? You can order the paperback here and the eBook here. You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned food at all. Shocking, I know, especially as this is the primary way that Sky connects with Japanese culture (besides the cute hapa boy she meets, of course). Stick around. I took so many pictures of wonderful fair food that it needed to be its own blog post.
BONUS: This isn't the first Tanabata Matsuri that I've been to. When I was writing an earlier draft of the project, I went to the Hiratsuka Tanabata Matsuri outside of Tokyo to do research. The part in TANABATA WISH when Sky sees a man walking around with his pet bunny on his shoulder...Totally true!
