Furiai Hiroba--Playing With Bamboo at the Fall Festival

Or:   What The Fourth Graders Did

As promised, here is the rest of the piece on the Fall Festival held at my kids' school two weeks ago.  The first time I posted on this, I wrote about what the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth graders did for the festival.  Everybody but the fourth graders, because it would have made the original post too long.

The fourth graders, for the second time (last year's fourth graders were the guinea pigs, apparently), made charcoal out of bamboo, as well as a number of traditional toys.  I stopped by school several times to watch the sumi-making process ("sumi" is charcoal or ink)

After they'd gone across the street to cut bamboo (with help, of course, from the teacher and a couple of community members who live near the school), they spent the last hour of the school day one afternoon sawing the long stalks of bamboo shorter, then splitting it so it would burn better.

...Koshi manfully wrestles with the saw:-))  It was harder to saw through than he thought!  The group members had to take turns as they got tired...

(Yes--they really trust 10-year-olds with actual sharp saws in Japan.  Not yet an overly litigious society...)

the split bamboo

....one of the maintenance guys used the iron rings below to split the bamboo length-wise.  Then it was cut a little smaller to make pieces of a uniform size for burning to make charcoal.  Watch the video below to see how he uses those tools to split the bamboo!

...sledgehammer and iron bamboo-splitting rings (small, medium, and large for various sizes of bamboo).







See?  Tap the bamboo down onto the iron ring with the sledgehammer, turn it upside down, and push.  Voilà!  The bamboo was then dried for a week, and the following Friday put into this contraption:

...I was so waiting for Bilbo Baggins to walk out of there...

...he had to seal the edges with clay so the smoke would only go out the actual smokestack...

...and as you can see, this is a completely hand-made affair.  Plugged up with a can of DyDo coffee...  But it worked just fine--made lovely charcoal (which burned over 24 hours), deep black, perfect to put in the fridge or the shoe box to absorb odors or to filter water in the manner of a Brita.

 ...Lovely black charcoal, still clearly a piece of bamboo...

 ... after cutting the charcoal into uniform sizes, the kids bound it with twisty-ties and bagged it for give-away at the festival...




 
 On the day of the festival, I discovered that the kids had made a lot more than just charcoal out of all that bamboo...

Pakah! Pakah! Pakah!  Clip-clop, clip-clop!  Horses' hooves made from bamboo.  You probably had a pair of these when you were a kid, but maybe made out of plastic or cans (stand on top, hold onto the strings, and try to walk).  I thought the bamboo made a more realistic, more satisfying, clip-clop...

...the ring toss game--a common game world-wide, but not often made of bamboo...













...low stilts, a nice size for kids to practice walking and balancing on.



....then there were the games the kids had made for parents and siblings to try at the festival, like the bamboo spinner below--as simple a toy as ever there was, consisting only of a flat piece of bamboo and a piece of string threaded through a hole drilled in the center.  Markers were out for us "O-Kyaku-san" (Honorable Customers) to decorate if we wished...







Watch Papa below play with the Spinner:







In order to get a baggie of charcoal, we customers had to go around and play with/make all three toys the kids had prepared--the Spinner, the Shooter, and the Take Tombo (Bamboo Dragonfly).

...the Shooter.  You stuff wet toilet paper inside this, then use the piece on the left to "shoot" out the toilet paper.  Papa was much better at this than I was--he made the pasty toilet paper go at least 10 feet!

My favorite toy, though, is the Take Tombo (Bamboo Dragonfly)--a very traditional children's toy, which in all likelihood originated in China (though it doesn't do to say so to the Japanese ;-)).

...one of the kids is getting ready to make the Bamboo Dragonfly fly!  It takes some practice to really make it go--but once you get the hang of it, it's great fun to make it fly far and high.

And most interesting of all (at least to me), was watching an older gentleman whittle one.

Watch:



Did you see how he whittles from the center out, but on opposite sides to balance it so it flies straight?  Here's the last bit, where he whittles the handle and puts it in, then demonstrates how to make it fly:



I love those Bamboo Dragonflies--they remind me of the oak seed pods my sis and I called Helicopters and played with as children (another natural toy :-)).  But by far my most favorite thing that day was this table full of animals and bugs made of leftover bamboo bits (made by a community group that makes hand crafts like this):

rice straw boots, bamboo animals and bugs

...the Crab...





...the Stag Beetle below...

      ...the Preying Mantis...

...the Dragonfly...

...and the Kitteh (with the Fox and another Crab visible in the background).

Outside, the fourth graders had also made bows and "arrows" out of bamboo, though I didn't get a good photo of those.  I do know, though, that those kids were having a ball that day:-))





Mata asobou, ne!