Having a Whale of a Time

So, not long after Tanabata (or at least not long enough to warrant taking down the decorations), I found out about the Whale (Well, Whaling) Festival (basically the night before).

   
Occurring in the town North of me, Nagato, I finally had an excuse to take the train that took me home more than three stops.

I then hopped on a bus to the island where the festival was. Look how international this city is; they even have faded flags.

  

    
I was surprised to see the place mostly empty. I was supposed to meet my friends there, so I tried to find them.

The festival was viewable from this dock thing, so we just stood here and watched. Surprisingly, there was one other foreigner there. He apparently had biked over from who-knows-where and was talking to his iPad as he recorded the event.

With some kind of explosion, the event finally started.
I'm far too lazy to go through and pick which pictures and videos are interesting, so you can have all of them.

The festival basically went like this: It opened with that explosion, then a whale boat and some whaling boats full of chanting people showed up on the horizon to drive the whale boat into the harbor. Then they chanted more and pretended to attack the whale by jumping at it and landing in the water while throwing their spears. Eventually they bored it and stabbed it, releasing red water from the blowhole, and then some announcer announced the event was over, ruining any submersion you had felt.

After the announcer began to speak, the guy in the boat shot off the blood again and blasted some dude standing right on top of it, which was hilarious.

Then we went and ate some whale rice. The first time I ate whale, I didn't have to go out of my way to support it, it was just there as part of the set meal everyone was getting. This time, I stole some of my friends', so I guess I'm still not supporting Japanese whaling, but there's blood on my hands I guess. Hopefully the fake blood they used with the whale boat.

Then we walked around the tiny, tiny town and got pictures with the whale boat.

There's also a whale museum,

   
and a whale shrine.

  
Complete with 70 dead whale fetuses!

Nagato's sewer cover features a whale.

We went into the museum. My friends had already been to it before I had arrived, but it was tiny, so it was quick.

  
I managed to miss the whale penis, so I had to go back in and find it. I'm sure there's some joke to be made here at the Japanese's expense, but that'd be mean.

Afterwards, we were interviewed by the museum lady or someone. In English no less (though I think we did say Japanese was fine). I didn't realize until like halfway in that she had a tape recorder, and the interview had already started. She seemed to want us to say negative things about Japanese whaling, or how the festival was offensive, but none of us said anything bad about it. Killing all the whales is one thing, (especially since whaling is illegal and extends beyond their waters, but they get whale meat by "capturing whales for scientific study and then selling the whale meat"), but the festival itself is fine. No one is getting hurt, and it's hilarious. If a bit slow.

We then walked around a tiny bit more, got into the car, and drove to get lunch.

  

  
At lunch, we managed to run into a huge crowd of other JETs, including the local Nagato ones. Why they didn't go to their own festival is beyond me, but I had to leave, so I just had them drop me off at the train station.

Rocks, the other famous part of Nagato.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a wait for my train. I tried to buy a solar panel to recharge my phone, but it worked out as well as you'd think. (It does nothing.)

I eventually caught a train and headed home. I was glad I didn't miss the whaling festival. Now if only Shimonoseki's Fugu Festival featured a colossal fugu submarine.