Let's go make a kite!

Next week is the 7th Annual Amakusa Kite Flying Festival.  Kite flying is a popular activity in Japan during the celebration of New Year's.  The Japanese word for kite is tako 凧 (not to be confused with octopus which is also tako 蛸 [and not to be confused with the wonderful Mexican dish which in Japanese is takosu タコス]).  Eric and I will be attending the festival next week, and in preparation for the event we attended a class on kite making. (Read more for the full story and pictures!)


They had two designs prepared for us to choose from.  Eric picked the kanji for dragon and I picked the drawing of Amakusa Shiro, a historical figure who led a Christian peasant uprising here during the Edo period.  This particular drawing is also the mascot for my bank.  They had traced these designs for us onto the kite paper and we began by painting them. 

The painting took a long time, and I'm really not used to using watercolors.  Once we finished that up the Kite Masters came over and helped make the frames for our kites with wood and string.  Then we cut out the kites leaving about 2 centimeters of excess on the edge.  Next we used paste to attach the edge of the kite to the string frame.

Our Kite Masters took over again and threaded the line for flying the kite.  They checked the kite's balance and shaved off part of the wood to even out the weight.

All that was left to do was attach paper tails and wind up a bunch of string for the line and we had finished kites!

We went outside to give them a test flight, but there wasn't much wind so they kept crashing.  I also managed to get caught in the kite-eating-tree twice.  After a few crashes I was nervous about the horrible sound it made crashing into the pavement and was afraid it would break before the actual festival so we called it a day. 

All in all it was a very productive day.  I think the kites turned out really well and look forward to trying them out next week at the festival.  I'll be sure to update next week with how it all turns out!