The 51st Apoi Fire Festival was held in Samani over the first weekend of August. I’ve posted about the festival a few times early on in this blog, but this year was a little different. Instead of attending the festival with the family, enjoying the stage acts and eating delicious festival food, I was actually working at the festival.
Many of the town hall workers end up helping out as staff to make sure the festival runs smoothly as possible, and I started working as festival staff last year. Last year, I did very little. I helped check the restrooms to make sure there was enough toilet paper and assisted during the bingo event. This year I was helping out with the children’s programs, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
On Saturday, the first day of the festival, the children’s programming included a water gun battle. An area was roped off and several refrigerator sized cardboard boxes were placed inside to act as barriers. The kids were given water guns and a goldfish-scoop poi (a ring with a layer of thin paper inside) which was tied to their foreheads and told to shoot the pois to break the paper. The last kid standing with an unbroken poi wins a few thousand yen to spend at the festival.
The kids were split into groups by age and given a total of 30 minutes, with a break every ten minutes. There were also buckets of water at each corner for the kids to refill the water guns. Shooting the pois seemed simple at first, it was actually quite tricky. Most of the rounds ended up with a 4-6 kids left and it came down to rock-paper-scissors to decide a final winner of each group.
Baby Bear participated and he had a great time! It was also quite hot outside so I bet getting shot with water felt really good. Baby Bear tried his best but about halfway through, his poi was broken. After he was disqualified, Papa Bear and Baby Bear took off to enjoy the rest of the festival.
Partway though my shift, after the kids programming was over, someone bought several cups of shaved ice that had shaved frozen strawberries inside and was topped with sweetened condensed milk, to share with everyone. It was very good and a perfect treat on a hot day!
After I finished my shift for the day, the three of us walked back to the festival to enjoy the fireworks. We grabbed some food and found a good spot to sit. Not long afterward the fireworks began. Right as the final round of fireworks was being shot off, it suddenly started to pour rain! Not just a little sprinkle, more like a waterfall. Everyone started running for cover. Baby Bear took off running and we had to chase him down, then we took cover in the mayor’s tent until the rain let up. As we were walking home it started pouring again right as we turned the corner to our apartment. Needless to say, it was an eventful evening!
The children’s programming on Sunday consisted mostly of these Bubble Balls. These are large inflatable balls with an opening in the middle that you climb into. It’s like being in a large pool floaty that covers you from head to waist. The challenge was for teams of 4 children to “fight” one of the staff. In order to win the kids had to knock down the staff member in 3 minutes by crashing into them sumo style. This activity was a big hit! Several groups of boys kept coming back to challenge each other.
In the evening there were a couple of well-known comedy acts performing, so after my shift was done I stayed for a bit to check it out. I’ve seen both performers on TV before so it was fun to see them in person.
Kuma no Kazoku 