A Unique Museum, Warland

There is a very unique museum in Sekigahara called Warland. Sekigahara has three museums where you can see many arms and armors used for the battle of Sekigahara. However, Warland is a bit different from an ordinary museum.

Once you enter the gate, hundreds of samurai dolls welcome you and they are stopping at the moment of fight. Some of them are shooting a gun, drawing a bow, riding a house etc. In addition to this, the quality of the dolls is low so that it enhances their mysteriousness. Therefore, Warland has become a popular spot for history fans.

As I remember, Warland was kind of a deserted place. I hardly saw visitors and I thought nobody outside of the town knew about the museum. However, when historical dramas and TV games became popular, lots of history fans learned about Warland and visit there. Now on weekends, hundreds cars are parked at the museum from anywhere in Japan.

It is difficult to imagine what the museum is like from my blog so please come and visit Warland.

Warland

http://photoguide.jp/pix/thumbnails.php?album=456

A new school in Sekigahara

Sekigahara Primary School has been rebuilt. The school had been under construction since the beginning of 2008. It is clean and has a garden in the very center of the school. I can say it is a quite unique design.

The idea of rebuilding came up to improve earthquake resistance and its capacity. The number of students is declining. Therefore, two primary schools were unified in this town. There were three primary schools including Sekigahara South, North and Imasu, that is the mountain side of the town. South and North were consolidated. Around 250 students go to this school. There used to be twice or three times more students a couple of decades ago. As other cities are thriving, many young people do not come back to this town.

This unification was controversial. Two schools had long histories and for some students the school location is inconvenient. Opposition forces collected the major population of the signatures but the town didn’t accept it. Later on the opposition forces sued the town and claimed compensation because their liberty was disturbed.

This unification eventually came up with excellent facilities. The security of the school has been improved and I hope that the new school provides a good environment for students to study.

A drama Sekigahara

The drama Sekigahara has been released from TBS On Demand which is Japanese TV Company.
The cast are absolutely amazing. They are the best and the greatest Japanese actors you can imagine. Main casts are including Hisaya Morishige who passed away recently, Toshiro Mifune, Teturo Tanba and so on. Most of them have died, but they are still admired by so many people. I was very surprised and delighted that these celebrities participated in the drama of such a small town.
The drama was based on the truth of the battle of Sekigahara in which 200,000 of samurai fought. The drama was made to cerebrate the 30th anniversary of TBS and was on air in January 2nd through 4th in 1981. It has been released just recently. 120 actors, 3500 extras, and 500 houses joined the drama. Since my town is not big enough, the drama was filmed another place.
I have never watched the drama, but I expect that it must be so spectacular. If you want to watch the drama, please go to Amazon.com.jp which is referred to below. You can get the DVD for 9,840 yen.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/In-English/b/ref=topnav_switchLang?ie=UTF8&node=1094656

A unique baseball game

A unique baseball game was held in Sekigahara Can you guess how the rules were extraordinary? You would definitely be surprised at the length of the game. It had 400 innings and took 104 hours to complete the game. It was more than 40 times longer than an ordinary baseball game. Of course, one team did not play a whole game. Nearly a hundred teams participated from everywhere in Japan. The game was sponsored by a Japanese beer company,” Sapporo beer”. Originally baseball games sponsored by the company were held in Nagano, but the location was moved to Sekigahara. Sekighara was chosen for several reasons. One is the fact of the battle of Sekigahara where east and west Japan battled to unify the country. An image of Sekigahara which people have is fighting. Second is the good location. Participants can get to the stadium easily.

Besides the game, there was a baseball lecture for some children who were in a local baseball club. Retired professional baseball players taught them. In Japan professionals cannot teach amateurs by law. Only retired players come to teach us.

You can see how Japanese people like baseball and how much Sekigahara is known widely. Baseball has become a Japanese national sport. People enjoy not only playing it, but also communicating through it.

A sumo competition

There was a sumo wrestling competition for primary school and kinder garden children in Sekigahara. Sumo is a Japanese traditional sport which a wrestler tries to push an opponent out from a ring. The competition was held outside. It was a clear blue sky and a nice day for doing sumo. The classes were divided into seven including one to six year primary school children and kinder garden children.

In total 97 children participated for this competition. I was a little bit surprised at the number of participants. There are still a lot of children in this depopulated town. The sumo ring was built outside and the children were wearing a Japanese loincloth like real sumo wrestlers. It is very interesting to know that two girls have won the competition in kinder garden and first year elementary school classes. In infancy, generally girls grow faster than boys so it is not unusual that some girls are physically stronger than boys. The same thing happened to me. I also took part of the competition when I was in the first year of elementary school. I lost a game with a girl. This competition reminds me of my childhood. The sumo competition has been a good opportunity for children to try their physical strength and to learn a Japanese cultural sport.

There was an autumn festival in Sekigahara. The festival was held at Hachiman shrine in Sekigahara on October the 4th. It was started in the Edo period and has been held every year since then. The history of the festival and what people do there will be written.

In the Edo period, there was a house fire in Sekigahara. The fire caught hundreds of houses and destroyed a large part of the town. A lot of people were killed. After the tragedy the shrine was built to enshrine the God of fire, so people hold a festival annually to wish that it never happen again. Most of festivals in Japan originally have such kind of reason related to a God.

It is very important to know that what we do in the festival. The festival has been a good event for children living in my town because a lot of stalls participate, so they enjoy having fun with their friends. To worship a God, some adults wearing Kimono walk around the town with Japanese lantern called chochin and every house is required to hang a chochin up in the entrance of their houses. We will have fireworks as a main event at the end of the festival.

I hope you have had some ideas about our festival. In the next week we have another festival for the Battle of Sekigahara. I am sure that a lot of people from other prefectures will come to this festival. It is going to be a big event.