Two happy rope twisters.


A couple of weeks ago Kate and I drove up to Kashiwa Jusco to see a wara exhibition put on by Sorcha's boyfriend Yusuke and his wara club. Other than knowing that straw from rice stalks would somehow be involved we didn't really know what to expect.

Follow up:

A friendly wara man greeted us at the door.



We were quickly ushered to man armed with a wara brush who offered to write our favorite kanji for us on cardboard plaques. Suddenly everyone in the room dropped what they were doing and gathered around to see what word the gaijin were about to request. The man with the brush didn't seem very pleased with Kate's request for the word "tanuki", but went ahead and wrote it down for her in hiragana. When I went up next he didn't move a muscle when I offered "kuma" as my choice. For some reason he finally relented when Kate suggested I go for "saru" instead. I'm not sure what he thought of Sorcha's choice of "genki", but I doubt he approved of that one either.




Later, Ewen and Mary showed up and got in on the act. They chose the more acceptable words "tsuru" and something meaning "sea man" in English.



Yusuke led us in a group wara rope making project. Step one: Lay out lots of thin long strands of wara rope on the ground.




Step two: Twist! For step three we repeated the same procedure to produce a second identical rope.



Step four: Twist the two ropes together to make one giant rope.




Step five: Tie the giant rope into a knot, and done.



There were all sorts of traditional wara crafts on display, such as this Chupa Chup holder.




Our friend the kanji painter rolled two long pieces of paper on the floor and slowly wrote some sort of message on them. What we thought at first was some kind of famous ancient proverb turned out to be bawdy jokes about the nature of men and women. This from the same guy who earlier looked so scornfully at us for our innocent animal kanji requests. Perhaps he would have been more pleased if I had requested "sukebe".



Next we got a chance to give wara craft making a go. Some of us had an easier time with it than others. What were we making you ask?




Tiny wara men! They even had a tiny sumo ring set up for the little guys to battle in. Soon it was time to go, so we said our goodbyes and headed home secure in the knowledge that if we ever needed to make a giant wara rope, or tiny wara man we now knew exactly what to do.




This photo of the happy wara twisting team comes from the Inkaki Wara No Kai website. Check it out for more info on wara, or stop by Yusuke's website at http://www9.plala.or.jp/yusukein