Amami Superman Photography

"Matsuri" means "festival" in English. "Funakogi" is the type of canoe race they have during the festival on Saturday. The races start around 8:00am and end in the early evening. The people who enter the competition are very competitive and start training for it months in advance. I've had friends that train their hearts out for this only to come up short of taking first place and then cry their eyes out. It's really amazing how passionate they are about funakogi. You'd think it was the World Cup for soccer.

It's kind of hard to see but there's a person sitting in the front of the canoe facing the rest of the paddlers. This person is there to help keep pace. Usually they have a whistle they blow to keep everyone in time with each other.



This is the hardest part of the competition, making the U turn. The canoes aren't the most stable and it's pretty easy to flip them over while making this turn.



Many people have these drums and beat them to cheer on their teams. Most of the time these drums are used for the traditional dancing they do here in the islands of southern Japan. I know they have drums like this in other parts of Japan but they call these kind "tsuzun" in the Amami dialect. My mother-in-law was telling me that they used to make these drums out of horse hide a long time ago. She doesn't know what they use now to make them.



Although I wasn't born in Amami, I call this place my home. This is the kind of site that makes me feel good about where I live. The amount of people that come out to compete with one another and the amount of people that come out to cheer these people on is really astounding. I am proud of this island I live on.



Almost every team has shirts they designed for themselves. The shirts in the above photo say "85 Kanan Funaashibi 2009". The 85 is the year this group was born which basically means this group is made up of friends that went to school together. That would make the people in this group 24 years old. I don't know what the "Kanan" means. I asked my wife and she didn't know either. "Funaashibi" is two words in the Amami dialect. "Funa" means "small boat" (I think), and "ashibi" means "play".



The big kanji on this shirt says "yuhigumi". "Yuhi" means "sunset", and "gumi" (or kumi), means "group" or "team". This team is from Ankyaba which is a small village in the town of Tatsugo just north of Amami City.



This where they post the winners and losers of the competition. These guys made me light headed just looking at them. I carry a towel with me wherever I go to wipe the sweat away. It's may sound kind of gross but sometimes it's a life saver, literally. During midday, if you don't have a hat, you can get heat stroke very easy here. If you don't have a hat with you, just throw your sweat towel over your head. You can probably see a few people doing this in some of the above photos.










People like to see these kinds of races where most of the boats are close and it comes right down to a photo finish (which they do have just in case).

It was very hot and I was starting to overheat a bit after walking around for just a little over an hour. And I even had my hat! I went home and tried to cool off and get ready for the "hachigatsu odori" they have in the evening. "Hachigatsu Odori" basically means "August Dancing". It's a tradition they do every year and I'll post that in a different post.