Since I mentioned Obon in my last post I figured I better explain what it is. Obon is a festival of the dead basically. Now from my understanding every little part of Japan is known for "their" particular festival. They do it better than anyone eles. For Okinaw its Obon or also know as the Eisa festival. Obon is a budist tradition rooted in ancester worship. So what happends is every year between the very end of June to the begining of September. It happends for three nights. It doesnt have an exact date on the calendar because its date is determind by the lunar calendar. And the best part for those of us who live out in town............for three nights starting at midnight to 1am or 3am(depending on the neighborhood) we get to hear drums beating and singing.

 The purpose of Obon is, the belife that what seperates this world from the spirit world (like a seal or a boundry, I dont think there is an exact translation for english) becomes the thinnest during  this time. Allowing spirits to return and walk our earth for three days. (kinda like the origins of Halloween)So for these three days the spirits of your ancesters return to the family home for a visit. Thus begining a week from the start of Obon people start cleaning out their houses and shops preparing for their loved ones to visit. Now the day of the first night. Families come together and make a big dinner or feast. They put the food table next to the frount door and open the door. At about dusk you can see people come out of their houses and leave lanterns or candles at the end of drivewas or walls to help guilde the spirits back home.

 This is where the drums, dancing and singing come in. At midnight of the first night the "troop" usually constisting of people from the community (and in my neighborhood every night is a differnt troop) start from the grave yard/ tomes and make their way through various streets of the community. Now you usually have men or boys dancing,banging in rythm and even jumping with large drums in the frount. Then you go to the middle of the troop where you have older women and men holding hand drums dancing. Sometimes there is a small section of girls or younger men with a medium size drum dancing. At the very back you have the young girls dancing they usually either have the okinawa clicky things or nothing at all.
Now they dont stop and dance everywhere. Usually if you want them to stop in frount of your house you have to pay the troop for their proformance. But they will stop at bussiness and certin point of the neighborhood. But most of what you hear (unless you go look for it) is the rythmic drumming and the yelling/singing of "hai eisa" and what sounds to be "an-a-saz-ie" and something eles I can't qutie make out.
 As I said befor this goes on for three nights. On the last night, the troop makes its way from the far edge of the communtiy back to the grave yard/tomes. But on this night when people hear the drums they come out of their house and take a little metal incense burner and burn a special type of papper in it. The paper has coins printed on it and is supposed to be money for the visiting ancesters for walking sticks and sugar cane in the after life.

The singing and the drums are suposed to guide the spirts but around my house during eisa you can still find some older folks carrying big sticks around with them at night. Although I have had the urge to put on a halloween mask and jump out of the bushes at these people. I dont want to give them heart attacks or get hit with a bigs stick either. So thats Obon in a nutshell for those who didnt know. Oh I have vidioe of some performances Ill try to upload to my profile as well.

Okay i can only find a few pics ............its going to take me a while to figure out which of my back up disks has the rest of the pics on them....=/