Salmon Festival and Horse Pull

Salmon Festival & Horse Pull

30 October 2005 - Rokkasho, Japan - Rokkasho Salmon Festival

We headed north about 1/2 hour north of Misawa up the coast to Rokkasho. It is a small fishing town on the pacific coast. Also home to the annual Rokkasho salmon festival. Salmon festivals are big deals here in Japan because, while the Japanese love to eat salmon, and they love to fish, it is illegal to catch salmon. That is probably because they love to eat salmon, and love to fish, so they would probably fish them out in a season. So, the salmon festivals are the only places they can get fresh salmon.

So we headed up with coast with our friend Ken riding his motorcycle for one last ride before the winter comes. Along the way, we passed some interesting buildings, a really strange pick-up truck, and some great scenery.

After a few wrong turns (the maps in the local base handouts are less than accurate), we finally run across the banners showing a big salmon, so we figure that is the way. The banners take us to the coast, were we find a waterlogged parking lot with a ton of cars. I figured the festival would be popular, but not this many people. However, as we enter the parking lot, we also see some horses walking around, so we figure there is something else going on in addition to the salmon festival. But, we continue to the salmon pools. We enter the salmon area. There are 2 circular manmade ponds with a ton of huge fishing leisurely swimming around. The pools are blue, tarp-lined jobs about 1 foot deep and a hundred feet in diameter.

Luckily, they had a young Japanese girl acting as event translator. She pointed us to where to buy a ticket. $17 to try your luck at grabbing a salmon. Then, we got into the long line of Japanese waiting to get into the pond area. However, they pulled out all the Americans in line, and let us go in first. Not quite sure why, but works for me. Basically, everyone lines up around the 2 ponds armed with a burlap sack - Jenn was armed with a $6 rain suit from Homac, tacky gloves for gripping the slimy suckers, and some large rubber boots. In the crowd ready to pounce on the fish were young and old, american and japanese, a little bit of everything, all armed to grab a salmon.

This nutty, excited Japanese guy gets on a mike, and explains to everyone that they will have 3 minutes to get in the pool and grab a salmon - one per person - at the end of which, if you didn't grab one, you can get one already dead. Then, they count it down, 5...4...3...2...1 - and everyone attacks the ponds...

If anyone has every been in the water with live fish, you know they have 2 gears - leisure swim, which is controlled and relaxed and generally serene. 2nd gear is panic swim - basically, when anything happens out of the ordinary, they freak out. It is not pretty - just rapid, random movement all over the place. Well, while everyone is surrounding the pools, the fish are in first, leisure gear. The instant everyone dashes into the pools, all the fish immediately spring into panic mode.

Jenn ran into the pool and tried method #1 - grab a fish by the tail. She grabbed a few, but they all ripped out of her hands. The fish were too strong.

When the grab the salmon by the tail did not work, she went to plan B. There was a large tube running the diameter of the pond feeding water into the center of the pond. The fish had to jump over the tube to continue swimming in the came direction. This was the salmon weak point. Jenn used the salmon obstacle for plan B. She walked up to the tube, placed her bag in the water along the tube, and then waited motionless while prospective catches swam by. She would let the small ones pass, swimming over the tube. When a nice large salmon showed up, she pounced, shoving the salmon into her waiting bag.

The only problem with her strategy - it worked too well. The rules say you are only allowed one salmon...Jenn snagged two at one time. She came walking out of the pool struggling against the two tails sticking out of her bag

The way she was fighting to keep them in the bag, I thought for sure that when she went to release one, the other would take off as well. But, she selected what looked like the larger of the two tails, and let the small one go. Jenn had her salmon.

She actually had a bit of time to spare. As the 3 minutes trickled away, the last of the people tried to capture their fish.

By the time the salmon grab was done, there was already a huge line of Japanese outside the pond area to get a salmon. I think the Japanese people like to just get the biggest fresh salmon they can find without trying to grab one.

Well, we had our salmon, but had no idea what to do with it. Eventually, we saw people walking around with nifty long, thin coolers, as well as a line of people waiting at a mama-san who was cleaning the fish. We we got a cooler and waited to get our salmon filleted. The funny part about it is it didn't seem like the lady was getting paid to clean the fish - but she was getting paid in her own way - she was keeping the fish heads! Obviously, the Americans didn't really want to keep the fish heads, but the Japanese people use them for soup, I hope. I have seen them in the fish market, packaged to sell. She was loading up on them.

Also, they keep the eggs. We have tried salmon eggs in our sushi restaurant - they are horrible, but the Japanese people love them. The translator girl collected a cooler full of salmon eggs. We gladly gave up our salmon eggs as well. What we did end up with is a huge stack salmon meat.

After getting our fish cleaned, we headed over to the festival portion of the festival. They had a street lined with vendors, a building with entertainment, and dancers to entertain.

Funny thing about a Japanese festival is the slight different in entertainment. Like in the US, they have food vendors

Like in the US, they have singers to entertain...

They also have street dancers, both a young group and an older group.

Overall, it was a fun little festival.

After we left the festival, we wandered back to the parking lot, and noticed a lot of cars still in the parking lot, as well as those horses milling around. These horses were the largest horses I have ever seen. They looked like Belgium draft horses, but in many different colors. So, I had to see what all these huge horses were doing here. So, we wandered over to see what all the horses were doing here. When we wandered over, what we found was one of the funniest things I have ever seen - it was a group of the largest horses I have ever seen owned by the shortest men I have ever seen.

After seeing these huge creatures, we found out why there were all there. They were having a horse trailer pulling contest. They had a dirt track about 100 yards long, at which there is a hill about 20 feet high. The horses pull trailers weighted down with concrete blocks or people or both. They sprint along the dirt track 3 or 4 abreast until getting to the dirt hill, at which point the hill stops the horses' sprint, and they have to struggle and strain to pull the sled up the hill - the horse that gets the sled to the top of the hill runs down the back side, and wins the race.

The crowd was obviously of the farmer community type. The guys were all under 5-feet tall. Must have been these guys have been farming for centuries in the north of Japan, and have bred these horses to pull their loads in the fields. And they were really into these races.

The first races were to small horses. They were really pony-sized. The sleds were smaller, and people rode them down the track.

The next race was the medium horses. They still had people riding on the sleds...

The first two horse races, people rode the horses down the track, and the horses had to pull the sleds back to the starting line.

But then came the large horses.

These sleds were LOADED with blocks. The horses were so powerful, people did NOT ride on the sleds.

When these guys would get to the hill, they would have to re-arrange the sled supports to get the proper angle on the pull up the hill. These huge horses would struggle to get the huge loads up the hill.

The sleds were so huge, they used huge tractors to get them back to the start line.

All in all, a great salmon and horse festival.