Yonabaru Rope Pull (Best Day Ever, 2.0)

So, we went down to Yonabaru to witness the 400 year old tradition of an all-city tug of war. I really wanted to see the big rope (that takes a year to make) and just take some pictures, maybe have a beer and that would be it, really. But I was wrong. It was much more than that.


First off, any where I go I will be singled-out and subsequently press-ganged into the affair. That's what I get for being 6'6" and so gaijin. (There's this one guy that renounced his American citizenship and has been writing editorials for years now in the Japanese newspapers about how unfairly he's treated in Japan for not being Japanese (looking). But, maybe I've been here for too short a time, I always feel welcome wherever I go in Okinawa and I can barely say, "my name is Paul, sorry my Japanese is so poor.") But I've digressed....

Yeah, just as I'm watching the guy giving the instructions on how to do this whole tug o' war thing (I had assumed this was a practiced team I was looking at), then I'm told that I need to put on this hachimaki (head band) and go pick up the rope for the parade through town.

I felt bad because the guy they paired me with was nearly a foot shorter than I and so he really couldn't carry the rope with me. There I am in the hot, hot sun in this procession with this enormous rope. The rope's so big that there are people standing on it, dressed in ancient ceremonial garb. All I can think is, "great, this guy's gonna get killed 'cause I drop the rope or I'm making the rope tilt too much." Meanwhile there are all these photographers and tourists coming up and taking pictures of this giant white guy carrying the rope being followed by a much smaller, slightly embarrassed Okinawan.

We get there and I'm freaked out: there are hundreds of people there waiting around and I know that we are to drop the rope by dropping the heavy logs that we've had propped on our shoulders to carry this enormous rope. I know that I have to be careful because they are going to throw the logs backwards (toward me) and then we are to start pulling as quickly and as hard as we can.

Somehow they are able (I still don't understand even though I was right there in the front) to thread the two loops together and then, completely by surprise to me, they start tossing the logs over their shoulders. I'm wearing flip flops and there are really big logs being thrown at me and I'm being bumrushed by the villagers as we being this all city tug o' war. I'm sorry there are no photos or videos of this singular experience, I am happy to report that I was not injured nor did I lose my flip flops. We won the first one, I didn't realize there would be a second one (including picking up the rope and threading them together again - even getting the people back up there on the rope!) and so the second one I was wiped out. But it's good because both sides got to win.

Then the second competition really gets going. Each side has a couple of standards on long poles with flowers. The musicians and dancers get everyone all frenzied up and the two sides see who can endure hoisting their standard up the longest. Crazy site.


At the end everyone takes a bit of the rope and puts it up at home or their business for goodluck for the next year.

We got some waters and drove to the 10,000 Eisa Dancers Parade in nearby Naha and that was pretty awesome. Then we went to an Okinawan restaurant and we ate the yummies like goya champaru (stirfried bitter melon with tofu) and mimiga (the skin of pig's ears), and listened to a guy play sanshin and sing the Okinawan standards, like "Haisai Ojisan (Hey Uncle)" and "Shima No Uta (Island Music)" and then we topped it off with my new favorite desert - Okinawan Zenzai, but that's another blog posting in itself. Before returning to our homes we made a night time visit to Shuri Jo, the ancient capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. It was a beautiful site, all lit up at night.