Concert Memories: A Letter to Chosei Village

To close out our travel notes, we'd like to record the rest of a conversation that was cut short, one we've been thinking about ever since.

After the DAY 2 show, even once we had waited through the staggered exit and left the venue, further restrictions were in place at the park exit to ease congestion on the surrounding roads.

The long line of Mononofu heading back towards Yatsumi Station kept moving and stopping. When we finally reached the park exit, another set of barriers had gone up right in front of us, and we found ourselves at the very front of the queue, waiting for them to be lifted.

After a while, a tall young man wearing a Chosei Village Office name tag, who had been guiding the crowd just ahead of us, came over with a smile.

'Could I ask you just one favour? I'm the one who made the four-coloured streetlights you'll see on your way home. Please do enjoy them.'

We had heard about the streetlights on the news, so we were thrilled: so this was the person who made them! Then he asked us,

'Where have you come from today?'

'From Osaka.'

He looked even more surprised than we had expected. 'All the way from Osaka!'

He was about to say something more when a voice called out, 'We're lifting the restrictions now!' and the line began to move.

'Ah, I was just about to tell you something!' he said with a laugh, and all we could manage was a quick 'Thank you so much.'

As we wrote in our earlier post, the walk home from there was filled with light of miraculous beauty.

The streetlights he had made glowed in delicate shades, just a hint of red here, just a hint of purple there. Together with the long line of yellow penlights carried by the Mononofu walking home, they created a truly breathtaking scene.

The two of us spent the whole 40-minute walk trying to name each colour ('Is this pink? Or purple?'), and not for a moment did it feel long.

Later, whilst browsing social media, we learnt that the field of cosmos flowers in full bloom, which had so moved us on the way in, was the work of local residents who had timed the sowing so the flowers would peak on the day of the event.

We also learnt that the four-coloured streetlights had already been switched back to their usual white the very next day.

We are deeply grateful to the many people, whose names we will never know, who gave us such irreplaceable memories.

We have no one in particular to address this to, so we are sending our heartfelt thanks out into the vastness of the internet, to everyone in the village who helped prepare for this event.

And we hope it somehow reaches the young man whose words were cut short that evening.

From Osaka