January 9th 2012

Kusumoto san invited me to the Ebisu festival at the Kotoshironushi Shrine in Torimachi, Tokushima City.  Although I know the god Ebisu from ningyo joruri, I’d never heard of this festival before.  When we arrived I was shocked how busy the place was.  Food stalls lined the backstreets and the deeper you went the busier it got

until finally, you reached the centre of the nest: the shrine and it was…jammed.  I followed Kus san into the crowd not really knowing what I was doing.  All around me people muttered about how tall I was.  It’s true, I was sticking out a bit and I felt some kind of mild panic but it passed.  The absolute unknown has never worried me, I only get stressed when I can quantify things carefully in my mind.
On the way to the shrine, we passed lots of chestnut sellers and I took a picture of the automated cooking equipment and the hot black grit inside.  I could feel the seller staring at me but I couldn’t look at him.

Back inside the shrine-scrum, I took pleasure in the fact that I had the best view of the top of everyone’s head.  I could see lots of funky haircuts and strange shiny patches and also, lots of weird flakes.  Best of all, I spotted a mega sprout:

and just behind the mega sprout, a pudding head.
It took 30 minutes to reach the front of the queue.  A woman just in front of me started chanting a mantra and everyone looked aghast, why?
Kusu san likes a whirlwind tour of things.  This is usually a good thing.  Mainly the festival was just a collection of food stalls selling the same thing (in different packages) so there wasn’t really any need to spend ages browsing.  We found a stall selling deepfried potato on a stick.  It was good, and it looked nice too.

After this snack we walked back to the car past this white wall with BMX tyre marks all over it.  It was just like a beautiful pencil drawing.

Kusu san bought a fukusasa (a good luck charm) for his business.

After this we had some sushi and I had a custard pudding and thought about haircuts.