Last Sunday, Japan House hosted a matsuri (which translates to 'festival') to celebrate 'food, drink, arts and Asian culture.' This is their third year hosting this festival, and each year more and more people come. I had volunteered last year and was confused for most of it, but it was super fun, so this year I volunteered again. I thought that I would be slightly less confused this time around, but hings had been changed and added from last year, including the layout of the festival, so I ended up floundering about for an hour or so before finally getting the hang of things. This year, I volunteered for the entire festival, plus a little longer before the official start and after to clean up, so it added up to about six hours. I was exhausted by the end, but with the aid of caffeine from my generous friend, chairs, and the general excitement that tends to emanate from a good festival, I was able to make it to the end.
I assigned to the ticket booth tent right outside of Japan House, which was fortunately within hearing distance of the main performance tent. Various strains of music would float over the lake to our ears as we faced masses of people asking questions and buying tickets. People would usually come to us in waves, so we would have minutes of being able to listen peacefully and sip water, to a half hour of chatter and trying to help three groups at once. It was a tiring place to be, but we were able to see and interact with many kinds of people. The most notable of which would be the guy in the full body Spiderman costume. Last year, that person (I'm assuming he was the same) wore the Spiderman costume with a blonde wig done up in pigtails that went down to his waist. This year, the costume was paired with a short, spiky blonde wig with a green heart headband. I've been wondering if he was advertising the cosplay tent, or if he was a visitor that just showed up in costume because he wanted to. Either way, he's done at least two things: make himself an attraction wherever he went in the festival and earn not just a little respect from many of us volunteers for his dedication in wearing his costume, as I'm fairly certain he wore it for the entire festival both this year and last year. It wasn't cool on those days either.
This year, the visitors to Matsuri were more diverse than usual. I had to help more than a couple people who did not speak English very well figure out how our ticket system worked and heard around half the conversations taking place in a language other than English. I saw people of all shapes and sizes; there was a little girl who barely reached above my knee dressed in a fluffy pink yukata (a summer kimono) and a guy who looked to be about seven feet tall playing with his kids (well, that's the estimated height from me, a rather short person). It's always great to see so many different kinds of people being able to mingle in one place, especially when there have been some recent events (which I will not get into on this blog) which would have made it difficult to host this sort of cultural event. It's especially great that it is in such an accessible place for us, in our little home of Champaign-Urbana.
