Monday, March 19, 2012
March 13th, Omizu Torii Matsuri, Nara.
On March 13th, I went to Nara to witness the Omizu Torii Matsuri, also known as Shunie. It is held at Nigatsudo Hall, a sub complex to the Todaiji Temple where a statue of a Great Buddha sits. This festival runs from March 1st to March 14th and this festival has annually held for over 1250 years making it the oldest recurring Buddhist event in Japan. But the event doesn't start until seven o'clock in the evening and Nara is a place that is a long ways away.

Kristen and Chami have never been to Nara and wanted to see the festival as well so we left Suita around eleven in the morning and made our way to Nara. I can't express how much I enjoy going to Nara, even though I see relatively the same things every time I go because I'm taking people who never been, but this time I was able to see some different parts of Nara. It's just that Nara always seems so refreshing despite it being a very popular tourist spot. But today surprisingly was a day that many schools seemed to be having a field trip to Nara. We saw tons of middle school students and elementary school students. But when we saw the elementary school students they were heading back to the station. A huge group of them saw us, and waved at us excitedly basically all of them greeting us with hello. They were absolutely adorable with the bright colored jackets and hats.

Both Kristen and Chami seem to really enjoy walking around Nara, and equally loved the ramen shop I took them to for dinner. This type of ramen has a lot thicker broth compared to many ramen shops. Kristen called it "Thanksgiving Ramen" since in her opinion tasted much like Thanksgiving.

After dinner we headed to where we needed to be, Nigatsudo Hall. We arrived at a good time I believe. There was quite a lot of people there but there was still enough room to move. We stood around for about an hour, watching the daylight slowly disappear.
 Nigatsudo Hall, Todaiji Temple, Nara.
Once the night arrived and right at seven o'clock the matsuri started. These monks, one by one, carry roughly ten foot long wooden torches up the stairs to the balcony of the temple. But the tips, which have a huge amount of sage or something similar, are lit on fire as they carry the torch up. When the first one got to the top of the balcony he held it out at the corner over the balcony allowing the fire to burn while the next monk brought up the next torch. What was burning didn't stay in fire form long, just making the plant grow fiery red. When the monk behind was almost to were the first monk was, the first monk shouted "はい!" (Hai. Translated literally as Yes) and brought the torch down but placed it along the balcony railing and started running making the flames on the torch grew. It was a beautiful sight, the flames spiraled a bit making it look like a shooting star moving across the balcony to the other corner at the end. The monk would hold it out over the corner like he was doing originally at the first corner while the monk behind him set up. This repeated, and at the end the monks carried it off behind the temple.

Honestly, I've never seen something so beautiful. There's nothing you can compare to what I had seen that night. There were just glowing embers everywhere, floating down from their torch like flower petals falling off the flower. And watching the monks run the torch across the balcony was such a thrill to see how the flames danced up into swirls.
Carrying the torch up the stairs.
The fire being ran across the balcony. (Stolen from Kristen)

At a corner of the balcony (Stolen from Kristen)
The matsuri ended after about forty minutes. Smelling strongly of sage all three of us headed to the station to head up.
Escrito a las 8:16 AM por Samantha.
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