HOOK 'EM HORNS

Of its many attractions, Nara is perhaps most renowned for its sacred deer (population 1200).  With no predators in sight, the deer run this town.  They cross busy roads with nonchalant abandon, confident that the motorists will stop for them.  They sidle up to tourists in the hope that someone will feed them.  They cluster around the little carts that sell sembei, or crackers, which are then fed to the deer.    The deer have even been trained to bow to tourists, a neat and endearing trick that often results in more sembei.  

For the past 300 years, Nara City has held a ceremony in the autumn in which Shinto priests capture male deer and remove their horns.  Traditionally, this was to prevent the deer from harming one another when sparring during mating season, as well as a means of preserving the trees in the park as the deer became more aggressive.  Now it's also a measure of protection for the tourists, who think of Nara as a giant petting zoo and disregard the fact that these are in fact wild animals (despite the civility of the deer as they bow for sembei).  There are large signs throughout the park warning visitors that the deer will "bite, butt, kick and knock down" people. Still, there are casualties every year. I learned the hard way that the deer are not to be trusted or pitied. A while back I was nearly trampled by a herd as I attempted to feed them crackers (they looked so pitiful!).   They descended upon me like a group of velociraptors- you have your sights fixed on the horde milling around you, when the she deer comes out of nowhere and bites you in the butt.

But I digress.  The process of the removal of the antlers is akin to a rodeo.  Three deer are let into a closed pen, followed by 10-15 men, some of whom are carrying Japanese lassos- bamboo lashed together into a square shape and tied to a long rope.  The lasso is thrown out, and if all goes well, the antlers get caught in the bamboo, and the deer is pulled in.  Meanwhile, 4-5 men set up a wall of fabric blocking off the caught deer from the sight of the other two.  Kind of like when the dentist takes you into another room before pulling out your teeth.

One brave man pins the captured deer to the ground as the others help.  Once the deer is immobilized, it is gently carried to a straw pallet, which has been unfurled on the ground.  The men lay the deer on the pallet, placing its head on a fluffy pillow.  A priest in a black mitre-like hat comes out, dribbles a little water from a tea pot into the deer's mouth "to calm it," and then takes out a hand saw and gently and deftly removes the horns.  When it's over, the men let go of the deer, and it runs off into a separate pen.  Painless. As you leave, you can pay 100 yen to have your picture taken with the sawed-off horns.  Some restaurants in the area even serve soups with shaved deer horn, or fry slivers into chips.

It's a good racket. The deer are well cared for, and the city makes a mint off of deer memorabilia.  Key chains, hand puppets, stuffed animals, postcards, tshirts, bags, hats, etc.  And let's not forget Sento-kun, Nara's mascot.  Each area in Japan has a mascot.  Nara chose a baby in a sarong with deer antlers. 

Sento-kun's GQ spread

Sento-kun and family: a portrait of creepiness.  This unnerved me more than anything I've seen in Japan so far.  At first I thought they were all dolls dressed up as different members of Sento-kun's family.  Negative.  If you look closely, they are actually humans dressed up as dolls dressed up as Sento-kun's family.

RUN, SHINJO, RUN

In schools across Japan, academia screeches to a halt for one or two October days for the commemoration of Sports Day.  What it commemorates, I'm not sure.  Athletic prowess? School unity? Nice weather? Pick a reason.  Regardless, it's taken very seriously and provides a two day break from classes: one day to practice, the other for the competition.  Sports day proper begins with an assembly on the field.  The school band plays marching music, and the various classes march by in lock step, chanting "Ichi ni, Ichi ni" or "One two, one two."  The students troop by and salute the principal (who was standing, appropriately, on a raised platform with a microphone).

The events are mostly what you would expect: relays, races of various distances around the track, tug of war, etc.  Then there are the wild cards, like the game where a male student must run 10 yards to where a group of his classmates are holding steady a long bamboo pole in a pose reminiscent of the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima.  He then literally jumps onto the backs of his teammates, shimmies up the pole, and places a flag at the top.  He jumps down, and the next boy in line repeats the process, except he takes down the flag that the first boy planted.  This goes on and on until every team is done (and the backs of the bamboo crew are broken).  

In another game, the girls take to opposite ends of the field.  When the starter pistol is fired, they run to the center, where there are more bamboo poles lying on the ground.  The girls try to bring back as many poles as they can for a win.  The desire to win is palpable, and I watched many a young girl being dragged by a gang of classmates across the dirt.  It had the makings of a scene from The Hunger Games. As for me, I was heartily glad to be out of the fray.  Indeed, I was well taken care of.  At seventy degrees with a vigorous breeze, it was a bit chilly for me, the cold-blooded one.  A student, chagrined at my perceived discomfort (goosebumps), immediately came over and started rubbing her hands up and down my arms to make me warmer.  Cue theme music to "To Catch a Predator."

Lest you think that I simply sat on my bum all day, I will mention that I did participate in two races.  One was a relay race with a bunch of the other "young" teachers against the students, which we lost.  Badly.  The second involved the students running a quarter of the track and then picking up a big card with the name of a teacher and a task.  They then had to go find the teacher, and run another quarter of the track with that teacher while skipping, running a three-legged race, holding hands and twirling in a circle, etc.  One of the teachers had to pick up a student and run with him across the finish line, like Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.  As for me, Daniel and I held the hands of a first year student as we ran pellmell. Happily, we quickly passed the other contestants and our student won first place.  As we crossed the finish line, I couldn't help flinging my hands up in the air in victory.  This is, after all, probably the closest I will ever come to running in an actual race.