Naha Tug-of-War!!!

I recently attended the biggest Tug of War in the world (or something like that... maybe it's just the biggest rope?) and I forgot to mention anything about it on the blog. I know, I'm a loser. A loser! Well, 15,000 people or so gather once a year in my capital on the island for a grand festival, involving many dancers and drummers and martial arts, and culminating in a ginormous tug of war. The photo above is one half of the giant rope being prepared to be tied to the other half of the rope. The entire rope weighed something like 44 tons. It is hand made every year in Okinawa. Clearly the thing is too big to tug on, so thousands of baby ropes run out of the sides, that hundreds of people line up on and pull. Many little children were doing spectacular things at this festival, such as this little girl performing on the, uh, shell. This is the first shell performance I've ever seen, and I bet it will also prove to be the best! Then there were these little dudes performing staff fighting. These two guys are awaiting their turn up. Though they look peaceful now, they will soon be wacking each other fiercly with blurry-whirling sticks. Kids here are all martial arts masters. You gotta watch out.

One of the most interesting goings-on at the Matsuri were the Pole Hefters. This is my name for them. I have to make up my own names for most things here. These are special festival "poles" which are quite large and heavy. They have different head-dresses and flags on each one, and there were about 2 dozen of them, perhaps. A group of about 10 men surrounds each pole. They wear special cloth pouch-belts that fit the bottom of the pole, and they raise the pole with these other sticks they all carry that have a cleft foot in them. Then one guy supports in in his belt and begins to bounce it up and down while moving his feet in a little dance, sweating profusely and concentrating intensely (as they should be, since if they dropped the giant pole it would crush about a dozen innocent bystanders in the crowd). The other fellows surround this guy in a circle and hold their cleft poles at the ready, to catch the big one if it falls (yes, it does fall. i saw it happen, and they DID catch it miraculously before it hit the bystanders. I still made a mad dash to safety and swore to never return to the pole's Radius of Death). All the while, they are chanting something and banging on gongs, moving up the street, and occasionally transfering the pole from one sweaty guy to a fresh guy. This transfer is very tricky: it is done in one BOUNCE of the pole, not by putting it down and putting it up again. Just heave a bounce from one pouch to the other.

At the end of the mighty Tug, everyone surges towards the rope, brandishing pocket knifes and the occasional machete, jumps on the rope, and begins feverishly hacking bits and pieces of it off. You can see from the photo that I too gave in the the hacking frenzy. Rumor has it that a piece of the rope will bring you luck for the year to come. My theory is that the Okinawan prefectural government started this rumor... because really, how else are they going to dispose of a 44 ton rope every year?