I.D Essay Book - Festival

It's been a while since I posted a translation but I felt like I had been on the computer too long today when I got back from work and writing out this long hand was really relaxing. The new edition of the essay book is so easy to hold in one hand! It's really light and flexible! Two thumbs up from me.

Since it's summer, it's fitting that the next essay to come out of the book is about a festival. Unfortunately the festival season is almost over but it's going to be hot for a while yet so I think it's a nice read for a summer evening. Enjoy!



Festival

Speaking of festivals, there is one scene that is for me unforgettable. It was something that happened when I was in the third grade of elementary school. It was the summer holiday that I went to stay at my grandmother’s house in Saga.

I got friendly with another child from the neighbourhood, K-kun, and together with my cousins we played together almost every day. As K-kun was the oldest, he became the leader without anyone realising it. Tanned dark from the sun, he wore a white t-shirt that was a little too big for him. I don’t remember what his face looked like.

One evening there was going to be a big festival so we children got to go out as well. It was a huge thrill and a luxury to be given pocket money and allowed to go out and play at a time of day when we usually would never have been allowed outdoors.

Children run without any reason to hurry, that’s the way they are. Even though the straps hurt my big toe, we hurried to the arcade in our beach sandals, patter patter. We were sucked into the bustling atmosphere, gradually swallowed up by the crowds of people. But buried in the adults who were crowding all around, we couldn’t even see the main stage; even if we had wanted to buy something from a stall it was all we could do to just keep sight of our friends. It was a scary, helpless moment when I thought about what might happen if I got lost in a town I was unfamiliar with.

But right then K-kun quickly pushed his way through the crowd, shouting “This way!” Panicked, we followed him and came out in a small alleyway. Twisting and turning again and again, running out through a fishmonger’s…set free from the crowds of moments before we just ran and ran.

Running, running, before finally making it through the confusing alleyways to find ourselves back at the entrance to the arcade we had been in earlier.

“There,” K-kun hadn’t brought us to a festival stall, but to a normal barbeque stand which stood there every day. Watching the festival’s energy from afar, we split piping hot takoyaki sitting on the curb. I can’t forget that nameless emotional high I felt in that moment. The unease I had felt moments before had disappeared, now a feeling of exhilaration from relying on K-kun’s trustworthiness through the back streets of an unfamiliar city. For a weak Tokyo child like me it is a special memory. Even now when I smell raw fish the image of K-kun’s back, clad in that white t-shirt, is engraved into my memory.

Just the other day, I had the chance to go back to Saga all of a sudden. My grandmother had passed away.

My now all grown up cousins took me for a walk along that old arcade. At the back of the station, which has been done up very nicely, the arcade was very quiet. There were lots of shops which were shuttered up. As it had always been, the shrine we used to go to was full of crows.

I thought to myself, I bet I’m the only one who remembers that festival. But my cousin pointed to an alleyway behind the arcade and said, “Do you remember that? That’s where we all ran out from at the festival.” So it wasn’t just been me who had experienced that emotional high that night!

I wondered whether to ask about K-kun or not. But as I did, I was surprised to hear his name being brought up by the other party: “Do you remember K-kun?” My cousin is now a dance instructor and it turned out K-kun was one of her pupils. When I enquired further, it came to light that K-kun, who I had thought was older than me, was actually a year younger!

Because he had lead everyone else, I had been under the impression that he was older. Wow, your memories really can be wrong sometimes…

My cousin showed me a video on her phone. It was a clip of K-kun’s back as he danced into a shop window in the arcade at night. The image of him shaking his butt to calls of encouragement was hilarious, and I laughed with a strange but happy feeling as I thought, “Ah, K-kun is always from behind.”

I try walking along that back path once again.
I smell the fishmongers.

Fin.