"The flash cause the horse to be very frighten."

This post is way past due. Especially, considering it is one of the coolest things I've seen, so far!

The weekend after Troy left, I headed back to Kamakura to see the Yabusame festival. On the surface, it's archery from horseback. But, like many things in Japan, there's always more. For those of you that want to know the "more" part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabusame. I'm not here to teach you Japanese culture and history. Furthermore, chances are, you didn't come here to learn about Japanese culture and history.

As I was sitting around killing time, still in my pjs, J-Pop and J-Ma showed up at my door, fully dressed and asked if I was ready.

I asked, "Ready for what?"

They answered that we were going to Kamakura together. In their many years in the area, they themselves have never seen Yabusame. Noriko was working, so it was just a dad, mom, and son day.

We got there about 11 a.m. and it rained for the next 3 hours (that's also how long we had to wait for the shooting to begin).

There were wet pigeons.

There were wet cheerleaders.

There were wet spectators.

First of all, don't ask me why there were cheerleaders. I just take the photos. As you can see, all of the open umbrellas negated my height advantage, in the crowd. It was mostly old ladies and at the slightest drop of water, they'd open their aquascutum (sp?). Later, when it quit raining, the occasional raindrop, disturbed by the wind, would fall. Fwwwt-pop! Fwwwwwt-pop! All the umbrellas would spring open.

The lane that the archers rode down was fairly long. Targets were on one side and people crowded in to see everything. We moved around but finally settled in one spot. We stood there for about two hours, waiting for it to start. J-Pop didn't look too comfortable. I asked if this was going to be his first time and last time. He said yes.

We were stationed at the first of the three targets. I didn't notice, until now, the ninja in my picture. I bet his pictures are better than mine!

Where's the ninja?

The release!

In flight!

Contact!

Reloading.

Each archer had to hit three targets. We could see them hit or miss the first target. After that, a woman on the loudspeaker would announce the next two. Before the announcements, we already knew the results. You could hear the crowd cheer or gasp at the next two targets.

I did my best to capture targets being hit, but my angle prevented the money shot. In this one, he had just scored on a small ceramic disc. The targets were varied. The first run was a bouquet of flowers. Next was a bullseye. After that they hit a board and for the end, a small ceramic plate. That's what can be seen, if you look hard enough, on the ground and disintegrating, in this last picture.

The title of this entry is a quote from the loudspeaker. She would frequently announce, in English, that the flash of a camera is prohibited. Apparently, in the past, it has proved to be very distracting to the horse and the archer. I can only imagine what happened. Incidentally, the only person in our group to get in trouble for using the flash, was an elderly JAPANESE man. Maybe they should've made the announcement in Japanese, as well.