Takasegawa Canal Sakura Festival

On Saturday, I volunteered at the Takasegawa Canal Sakura Festival on Kiyamachi Street. The festival was held by the Old Rissei School machi-zukuri (~Neighborhood Planning Committee) and some very friendly people that I met on Facebook.

The idea of the event seemed to be two-fold: informing people about the history and significance of the Takasegawa River/Canal, and (of course) enjoying the cherry blossoms.

The part of the festival that I was helping with was a boat ride in the canal under the sakura blossoms. Before the event began, several of the volunteers assembled a takase boat and jury-rigged the canal to increase its waterlevel in the area of the boat ride.

A kimono-clad band of five girls helped to lure visitors. Then, we offered rides on the boat to passers-by and gave them information and a quiz about the canal. People seemed to have a really good time. Two maiko even stopped by to see what was going on!

While "volunteer patrolling", I was given the special task to look for foreign tourists and to give them the information sheet about the canal so that they could "more thoroughly enjoy their experience" in the area. This was uneventful as a surprisingly low number of English speaking people passed by the canal. However, I did meet one fun couple from Issaquah, WA who were filming a series about Japan for a PBS show called Discoveries Asia. They shot a quick interview with me about the canal, the event I was volunteering for and why I was in Japan. It will probably end up on the cutting room floor, but there is a small chance that I could be on their show. How amusing!

Some other things I learned are that the Takase boats (Takasebune) are well-known from the title of a novel by Ogai Mori. These boats were used on the canal and as such, the name of the canal came from the name of the boats. There is also an old popular song called Takasebune that we were playing on a CD all day. Even though it was a beautiful song, by the end of the day I was so tired of hearing it.

It was a fun experience to try volunteering at this festival, especially since all of the event planners and all of the other volunteers were Japanese. A few of them spoke English, but even so, the day was a good chance to test my Japanese skills. I still have a long way to go, but as long as I kept my sentences simple, people seemed to understand what I was saying. Sugoi desu ne!