OBON (Pronounced Owe bone)

I owe this opportunity to write at length to the wonderful people at the ministry of japanese holidays who decided that August 12-16th would be a great weekend to give most of the country some time off. My 6pm class which is usually held on location at a large industrial electricty factory was canceled today because of the Obon holiday and that has left me quite a bit of time to write. And as we still dont have the internet at home, I can only write when Im in the office with nothing to do. Even then, I have to type on a japanese computer with a keyboard designed for typing japanese, which means, as you have probably noticed, that I still cant figure out how to type an apostrophe.

So Obon is the second most important holiday in Japan, next to New Years. During Obon, the tradition is that dead ancestors return to their graves to be with their living progeny. Thus everyone (okay well not everyone, but a lot of people) goes back to their hometown and visits their local shrine or Ginga to clean the grave sites, offer food and flowers, pray, and ponder. The graves are actually miniature sepulcures of sorts that hold not bodies but urns. Families are burried for centuries in the same place.

Besides all the worship, Obon is a big excuse to party. Just about every major city has some kind of festival on or around Obon weekend, and that is what we were interested in. None of my japanese friends are buddhist so there was not opportunity to go visit a grave to see how its done, but a family I know in Tokushima has been invovled in that towns dance festival for thirty years, so we headed south to Tokushima.

From Marugame, Tokushima is about 125 kilometers south east on the local highway. It takes three hours to drive their unless you want to take the expressway, which only takes about an hour and a half, but you have to pay a 2000 yen (about 18 dollars american ) toll. We left marugame Sunday morning at 7 AM on the local highway with every intention of avoiding the 18 dllar tole, but about an hour into our trip the local highway appeared to end at an onramp to the expressway. Their were two smaller roads that went to the left right of us, but we werent sure where they went and since we were trying to make it to Tokushima by 10 AM for Church we decided to take the express way. From where we were it ended up costing 1300 yen (about 11 dollars american).

The legal speed on the `express` way is 70 kilometers per hour,(about 50 mph) but even driving at 85 kpr we were being past on the left and right by surely looking Japanese people who couldnt believe how slow we were going. After holding up traffic for quite a while along a particularly long stretch of single lane expressway, I decided to drive a bit faster.

The expressway snakes through the mountainous country side, sometimes bending around hillsides, and sometimes plowing through them via tunnels as long as 2000 meters (about a mile and a quarter). Passing through large cities the expressway skims over the tops of small buildings on large cement pilons which disappear into nothing as the road touches down in the country side, only to reappear as massive concrete stilts hundreds of feet tall that support the expressway as it leaps off one cliff and spans an entire valley until it reaches the the side of another green hill. About thirty minutes from our home in Marugame the expressway performs one of its most spactacular feats, perhaps bested only by the underwater tunnel that connects Honshu to Hokkaido in northern Japan. From Sakaide City, the expressway makes a dramatic turn north and heads out over the green choppy waters of the Japan inland sea. Just as you think its about as far out as it can get it touches down on an island several thousand feet from shore. From their it wriggles and weaves its way accross the inland sea, bouncing from island to island until finally after nearly 15 miles the expressway again touches ground in Okayama.

The bridge itself is actually six bridges that carry on their backs four lanes of traffic and two regular train lines. There is even room for a bullet train line to be added sometime in the future. The entire bridge chain was completed 1988 and took ten years to build.

The expressway got us to Tokushima an hour ahead of shedule and we were glad for it. Callan needed to get a good run in before sitting through three hours of church. He took laps around the small church building while I follewed closely behind and melissa rested in the car.

The sensation of being in Tokushima again, a place I had served for almost half a year as a missionary, was almost more than I could take. But my 8pm class is about to start, so for now,

matta ne.

ps forgive the typos- no editing whatsoever this round.