Here is the other burning stuff festival we went to recently. It’s called Omizuokuri which means water sending, a strange name for a festival where they burn stuff, I know. The ceremony is about 1,200 years old, which is pretty old, I suppose. The idea is this: Sacred water is taken from Obama, in the south of Fukui and poured into a river. This river winds around all the way to a well in Nara. The well that happens to be inside of Todai-Ji a huge temple in Nara. It takes about 10 days or so. Then in Nara, they have a big Omizutori ceremony, where they pull the water out of the well and ... well burn things.
I have heard that the river they pour the water in actually empties into the sea of Japan. It’s not that shocking when you think about the whole process. I mean, how could the priests be expected to pull the same sacred water -which seemed like about a liter- at the Omizutori ceremony, that was sent at Omizuokuri 10 days earlier?
Water business aside, we got to the temple, and our friend Joe bought a torch. He wrote a message on it, which is what you do, and we headed up to the temple. Then the guys in the temple start burning, what looked like a small tree, inside of the temple. Then they swing it all around the temple and they burn really big torches and took them along the path that we were going to follow. Then it was our turn to light our torches.
What happened next was not unlike being at a mosh pit at a rock concert. Except replace angry youth with old men and women with sticks. Old people in Japan are some of the world’s premier pushers and this group was no exception. Even my overwhelming girth and Joe’s rippling muscles were little match for the “low Tide” of short elderly pushing. An old woman hit me square in the forehead with her torch with out so much as a sumimasen. I also saw some people accidently drag their burning torch along the legs of an unwitting old woman. She escaped immolation but I’m not sure how.
Luckily we made it to the path with our lives. We then proceeded to the river, which was about 30 minutes away.
By the time we made it to the river the torch was far to small to safely hold, so Joe threw it into a bucket of water. Then we watched the ceremony of water sending. Which was pretty average. They shook the big torches, and poured the water out. That was probably the least exciting part of the whole thing.
What I have failed to mention up until now is that the priests are wearing outfits that are a little like that of the KKK. When Japanese people talk about Omizuokuri they always mention this first. Not because they like the KKK, but rather they like the look on your face when you hear about it.
