Obon=Eisa

So last week was Obon, like a Japanese Dia De Los Muertos, where the spirits of our ancestors return to us and we offer them food and drink and entertainment.

The offerings go on the family altar, usually some fruit and some rice (this is when you put your chopsticks in the rice sticking up), a glass of water and/or some sake (or awamori in our case).

The entertainment?

Eisa, of course.

We live in Okinawa City, which boasts the best Eisa teams in the country; so each section of the city (Goya, Takahara, Awase, etc.) has a team that goes through the neighboroods playing during Obon.

I was working on the last blog when I heard something, I opened the window and this is what I saw:

I grabbed my wife, who was recording another gorgeous song, and we ran downstairs to find the dancers. And what do you know? They came to us!




These teams rely on the patronage of the neighborhoods, so they will come around with a collections box. We live next to a conbini (convenience store) so we bought them a 6-pack of beer and a few liters of water and gave them Y1000 (we're not sure what we're supposed to give so this seemed to cover all the bases).

So, what happens when two Eisa teams meet while doing the rounds? Well, they have to battle, of course.

The two teams will face off where both teams have to try to maintain the rhythm (because although the songs are the same name, each group has a slight variation of the traditionals). If someone on your team gets off beat you lose and your whole team has to get out of the way and let the others through. To determine this a crowd is really necessary and so the teams really try hard to avoid heavily trafficked areas unless they think that they are rock-solid.

We went to the Goya neighborhood (near Koza Music Town) because we heard that the two best teams in Okinawa, Goya and Senda (spelling?), have a tradition on the last night of Obon of squaring off. On the way we saw these folks: