Matsuri At Powell Street

Network building, picking up girls, call it what you like.

I decided to volunteer at the Powell Street Festival, an annual weekend festival run by the Japanese-Canadian community there. Spending three years in Japan myself, I was hoping that my experience and fluency in Japanese would be of help.

The first thing we did was set up the whole place on Friday. There was a lot of work to be done in terms of erecting (heheh) and arranging the smaller kiosk tents, putting up the large event tents, and setting up the main stage at the baseball diamond. There was about 30 people to do the setup, but fortunately, the festival wasn't that big, taking up only a neighborhood park. And best of all, a lunch consisting of delicous food in Japanese bento boxes was provided!

The hardest work was driving down these huge, 2 and 3 foot-long iron tent pegs with sledgehammers. Normally, I enjoy hitting more compliant objects with a sledgehammer, such as walls, uncooperative electronics, illegally parked vehicles, and human heads. In this case, the ground was tightly packed, particularly at the gravelly baseball diamond. We would also hit the occasional rock-hard object somewhere in the ground, which probably explained why someone in the neighborhood won't be getting any water or natural gas - or is still wondering where Grandma is buried.

The next day, Saturday, the festival opened, and I did my part by doing a demonstration with my iaido class. Due to the tight space, I stopped short of stabbing one of my classmates. Although the swords that we use aren't made of carbon steel and don't have an edge, they still have a bit of a point. Well, it's not my fault that unlike karate, you don't look at where you attack until you actually attack in iaido. Fortunately, my superior contol over my sword throughout the thrust saved her life and no one noticed the near fatality. Then again, it would've validated the effectiveness of the technique we were demonstrating.

After the demonstration, we all scattered and I was left to look around the festival, shop, and try the various fare at the food stands that broght me a sense of nostalgia of going to an actual festival in Japan. I was also planning to wear a men's kimono the next day, so I needed something to carry loose change, since, unlike women, men do not carry a special purse when wearing a kimono - that would be too gay. Rather, guys stash their stuff in their kimono sleeves. Still, loose coins isn't the best things to keep in your sleeves, unless you're doing some magic trick like pulling a quarter out of a poor kid's ass.

After shopping around all the kiosks,I finally found the perfect coin purse - a small one closed by drawstring with, oddly enough, designs of a bunch of angry-looking owls. I thought it was very kawaii and a bit mysterious, as it made me wonder what is making those owls angry (Is it because the White Man took away their land?). Also, both the color and design was consistent with the mood of the angry dragons on my kimono. A great buy for $4!

The last day of the festival, Sunday, was going to be the busiest. Not only was I going to be volunteering all day, but I also had to help with taking everything down once it was all over. I started by hosting the events at the Japanese Language Hall, which included a Japanese archery demonstration, Hiroshima atomic bomb expo, music & dance shows, and a musical poetry reading. I ended up using my Japanese after all, as some of the older people were actually from Japan, rather than 1st or 2nd generation Japanese.

My evening shift was spent guarding the door to the makeshift performer's change room across the street, space kindly donated by some Filipino community center. Fortunately, I had a clear view of the main stage, so my watchdog shift wasn't so boring as I caught the last spectacular taiko drum shows and the closing ceremony. I didn't have to use my iPod after all.

The end of the festival and the ensuing cleanup finally came. Some locals and even some homeless people came and helped out, as dinner was being provided at, oddly, a Chinese restaurant not too far away from the festival site. If I just saw these people out in the street, I'd probably wouldn't talk to them at all, so it's another benefit to the community that this festival has brought us together. Although the setup took all day, the cleanup only took a few hours, and we were off to enjoy some delicious Chinese food.

Well, the story doesn't end there. There was a Gay Pride parade going on at Davie Street, at the same time as the Powell Street Festival. Although I specifically told my mom that I was volunteering at the Powell Street Festival last weekend, she still somehow manages to get it into her head that I was trying to tell her something by participating at the Gay Pride parade.

So she called me to make sure I wasn't volunteering at the gay parade. I told her, as I have done before, that I was volunteering at the POWELL STREET FESTIVAL, a Japanese festival going on at POWELL STREET, not Davie Street. At that point, she was probably picturing me in my men's kimono and carrying around that special kimono purse. Before I hung up, I reassured her that our festival had nothing to do with homosexuals (even though they are welcome to attend the festivities), and that it was strictly about the Japanese community there.

Then I ended the call by telling her that I had an absolutely faaaaabulous weekend.

A Japanese balloon fishing game, where you keep what you catch.Probably the closest thing your dad will ever do to taking you on a fishing trip.