{"id":517530,"date":"2022-08-16T10:22:50","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T01:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visitmatsumoto.com\/?p=517530"},"modified":"2022-08-16T10:22:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T01:22:50","slug":"what-i-saw-in-the-crowd-at-the-fukashi-shrine-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.visitmatsumoto.com\/en\/uncategorized\/what-i-saw-in-the-crowd-at-the-fukashi-shrine-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Saw in the Crowd at the Fukashi Shrine Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"\n

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Perhaps the general public wasn\u2019t fully aware that Japan was experiencing a sharp upswing in confirmed coronavirus cases, leading to the 7th and by far most extreme wave<\/a> of the pandemic. Or maybe people just don\u2019t care anymore.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s somewhere in between.<\/p>\n

Last month saw the return of the Fukashi Shrine<\/a> Festival, with stage performances and ritual prayers and all the pleasant trimmings of your typical Japanese summertime matsuri.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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And like kids cooped up in the house too long the crowds descended on the shrine grounds.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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Social distancing may be a thing of the past, but everyone \u2013 almost \u2013 was masked up.<\/p>\n

My son was there among the hordes, wandering aimlessly, carelessly with his buddies from school. I didn\u2019t see him in the hour I was there, but I could imagine the joy in his chest. Like all students, from pre-school to university, he has experienced a lessening of a life. Or would it be more accurate to say he hasn\u2019t been able to experience the life that lay before him before the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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From what I\u2019d seen and heard, the altering force of the pandemic was not as severe here in Japan as it was in other countries. After the initial prudent and judicious closing of school for a month in 2020, life has gone on \u2013 but with a caution that has taken away from the lives of children everywhere: the curtailing of after-school activities; the cancellation of academic, athletic and community events; the quietly-heeded requests for parents to refrain from allowing their children to go outside and play.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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As we creep toward the third anniversary of the outbreak of the pandemic \u2013 and witness the worst wave yet to hit Japan \u2013 life seems, in spite of it all, to be continuing on. For someone who loves to travel; for one involved in the tourism industry; for a person who would much rather make his living outside than in, the end of the pandemic and the concomitant reopening of Japan\u2019s borders to the rest of the world cannot come quickly enough.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, that my children, that all children, can rediscover \u2013 or discover for the first time \u2013 the magic of the everyday lends more than fair consolation.<\/p>\n\"\"\n