CONTENTS
September 2012
Photos: Friesian Balloon Festival in Joure 2012
References in Dutch
References in English
About the structure
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| Hot-Air Balloon in Heerenveen, the Netherlands in June, 2012 |
In Japan, it is not an accessible
thing to experience balloon flight. Not only that the number of companies and
clubs running balloon flight tours is limited but also, though you find a tour
and take more than several hours to get the location, there is no guarantee that
the flight takes place because of the possibility of bad weather - from Tokyo
to Furano, Hokkaido where balloon tours are relatively popular, the distance is
more than 1000km. The complicated terrain and the extended urbanised suburbs are
just some of the reasons making balloon flight difficult. Unlike in the
Netherlands, there are electric wires hanging above the ground level everywhere,
and that makes balloon flight even harder.
‘There is no
wind and the sky is clear, so we may go on a balloon tour today,’ sounds almost
never likely in Japan. How about in the Netherlands? In the province called Friesland,
it is not a rare occasion to see balloons floating in the air. On a mild day
from spring to autumn, a number of balloon tours are operated by various
companies.
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1 Present
My boyfriend received a ticket
for a balloon tour for his birthday from his friends.
‘Balloon
flight. That sounds interesting,’ there contained not much curiosity in my
reply. On the day of his flight, I decided to stay at home and spent some time
with friends in the living room munching biscuits and pistachios and drinking
herb tea with some pieces of fruit in it. He left home around seven o’clock in
the evening and, unlike what I expected, came back home after one o’clock
midnight. As I was still awake lying on the bed, I got up and went downstairs.
There were
some pieces of grass entangled in his hair and he looked unkempt, and moreover
he looked like someone who hadn’t taken shower for a few days. His hair was
greasy and not very clean. I remembered him taking shower before he left home.
But now, there was some sweetish smell drifting away from him. I simply had no
idea what had happened to him.
‘I have to
take a shower. I have got champagne poured onto my head. And some grass as well,’
he said with a slight excitement. I still could not get any idea about what he
was talking about.
‘There was
some commemorative ceremony after the landing. The champagne toast and grass
were a part of it. But I got a lot of them. Some people even got their clothes
wet,’ he said.
‘Do they do
such a thing as well? But what is that ceremony with grass anyway? How about
the flight itself? How was it like?’ I asked him lightly.
‘It was nice
– in fact incredible. We prepared the balloon near Jan’s place and took off. I
think we flew for a long time. Sometimes we were flying very high and sometimes
very low,’ he answered.
‘How high
did it go?’
‘At the
highest, we were at a height of around 500 metres. I could see the places far
away. I have never known well how our local land looks like. And just before we
landed, it flew very low. It was so low that the basket even touched the tops
of the trees,’ he spoke with a faint lilt.
‘Really? So
low.’ I imagined the view of a balloon flying so low just above the forest
trees and I found it exciting.
‘Then, we
landed in the middle of the grass field. And there was an old man scuttling
towards us and looking furious. When he reached us he squeaked, “What a hell
are you guys doing here? You could have frightened the horses so badly” I felt
a bit sorry for him but at the same time I found it amusing because he was
totally worked up,’ he said. He found the way the old man got furious funny.
‘Were there
many horses around the place? Did they get really frightened and bolt away?’ I
found the story of the old man and his horses funny - I became more interested
in that story rather than that of the balloon flight itself. In my head, there
was already a picture of the horses getting panicked, jumping over the fence,
and running away.
‘Well, the
horses were, I think, inside of the barns. At least, I didn’t see any of them. I
reckon the old man was trying to say that if the horses were out there it could
have been disastrous.’ We continued talking for another few minutes, but then
we stopped, and I went back to the bedroom and he went into the bathroom to
take a shower.
Several days
after, I was invited to a balloon tour.
2 Shiori
It had already been several years
since Shiori started living in the Netherlands. In this little town in
Friesland, as far as Shiori knew, lived no other Japanese person. These past
years, she had been learning Dutch by herself and working for a Japanese
company in a nearby city. As the majority of the people in the town spoke
Friesian, though she was studying Dutch she was often surrounded by a Friesian
conversation rather than that of Dutch. Living in a Friesian-spoken community
it was hard for her to practice Dutch in her everyday life, and she felt
impatient about it. Still, her determination to live here with her Dutch
husband fuelled her motivation about mastering Dutch language, and she worked
with a will in order to establish her career in the Netherlands. Then, it was
one such day, she found out about her pregnancy.
It had been
a couple of months since Shiori had her baby. Her family in Japan strongly
recommended her to give birth back in Japan, but she delivered a baby in the
town’s only hospital without any complications. In the beginning of her
pregnancy, she wasn’t sure whether to give birth in a foreign land far away
from her own family. But, as the support from her husband and his family living
close by was encouraging and as the service from the hospital was very
assuring, Shiori was able to gather confidence in giving
birth in the Netherlands within sixth month after she got to know about the
pregnancy. And to Shiori’s relief, her mother took the trouble to come to the
Netherlands so that the mother would be able to help her daughter giving birth
and caring for a child.
I met Shiori
just recently. It was a mere coincidence. Since then, we came to see each other
on a weekly basis. Sometimes it was at my place together with others and
sometimes I accompanied her when she took her baby for a walk.
One day,
Shiori and her mother, triggered by my boyfriend’s recent experience of balloon
flight, started talking about balloon trips. Shiori had ridden in a hot air
balloon before, and the thing about her experience was added to the
conversation, and the talk grew livelier.
‘I have come
all the way to the Netherlands, and I think I will never have a chance to ride
in a balloon in Japan. I now feel like riding in it. Do you want to come with
me?’ Shiori’s mother said. She was obviously getting lured to a balloon
adventure. ‘You know the person whom you have recently met……she didn’t join her
boyfriend when he rode in a balloon. She was saying that she decided not to
join him as she wanted to save some money, wasn’t she? I don’t mind paying for
her ticket……so, why don’t we ask her to come along with us?’ the mother
continued. She was implicitly hoping her daughter who was married to a Frisian
man and was living so far away from Japan to make some Japanese friends living
in the same area, so that they would be able to help each other.
The things
about the balloon flight moved on, and as a result I was invited to it. There
had not been long since I met both Shiori and her mother. Receiving a ticket for
an one-and-a-half-hour hot air balloon flight which cost one hundred-sixty
euros was totally unexpected. I thanked
them truthfully, and I was to ride in a hot air balloon for the first time in
my life.
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| A basket for balloon flight |
3 Flight
The flight
was more than what I expected. It was a mild day with sunny spells. And there
was little wind. Tens of people were at the take-off site. Most of them seemed
to be friends or families of the tour participants. As it was Saturday, there were
some more people than usual going to ride - more or less than twenty ticket
holders were seen at a glance. I could see two balloons were brought to the
site for the today’s flight. One basket was smaller and the other bigger. The
pilot had told Shiori, her mother, and me to join the group of people for the
bigger basket. All of the preparation process from getting the baskets and the envelopes
out from the pickup trucks till having them ready was supposed to be helped by
the tour participants, and this was taken for granted as a usual event. During
the approximate forty-five minutes of preparation, the envelopes were warmed up
and inflated every second.
The burner
was rumbling with a low heavy sound and injecting a flame into the envelopes
heating the air within. The baskets were no more than a gigantic fruit basket
and were made of woven wicker. I winced a little at the sight of the organic-looking
baskets in which used no scientific technology. Living in the twenty-first
century, my image of any sort of flying objects were “made of materials with
robust and with latest technology.” Being far from the image I had, the baskets
had no disparity between those before my eyes and the ones flying several
centuries ago.
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| A flaming fire of the burner just above my head |
The archaic baskets
were giving the entire balloons some unique ambience, and three of us looked at
them getting ready with unspoken excitement. The air inside of the envelopes
was more and more warmed up and they were getting distended.
‘You can now
get into the basket,’ our pilot told the passengers, and we began moving with
alacrity towards the basket. The people who were to fly with us also started
walking towards the basket with excitement and crawled one by one into the
basket which was lying on its side. Our basket was large and was split into five
sections - two
smaller sections on each side and one relatively bigger one in the middle - by partitions. The partitions
were for structural bracing and for compartmentalisation of passengers. As it
was on its side, we were all lying inside of each of the compartments with our heads
sticking out of the basket. The pilot then joined us swiftly taking up the
centre compartment with the burner unit in, and our balloon with all eleven of
us in was just about to float.
With the
flaming fire of the burner just above my head, all I could hear was the dragon-like
roar of the burner. Suddenly, the basket
got pushed and it was now standing upright. And the next fraction of a moment,
our balloon was already floating at the height of thirty metres above the
ground.
‘What – oh
my goodness. It is already rising!’ I unintendedly whooped. I felt whatsoever
no sensation of rising and did not notice the balloon started moving. When I
realised, the ground was rather dropping away at a tremendous velocity. Forty
metres, eighty metres – in no time, it reached the height of one hundred
metres. A hundred-fifty, two-hundred, then to an altitude of three-hundred
metres - the balloon rose sweepingly and glidingly with tranquillity. And in
such a brief instant during which I could sense nothing but the sound of the
burner, our balloon rose and was already floating in the air at the height of
four-hundred metres.
I have taken
a helicopter countless times. Most of the times, it was for my work. As a means
to fly, I always liked flying with a helicopter the best. The biggest reason
was that I could feel the earth closely with a detailed observation. It can
make small turns and it is comfortable enough. Because of the experience I had
with the helicopter flights and of the absolute assessment of them, my expectation
of balloon flight was not high. However, the
balloon experience was nothing alike any other. Was it because of the direct
contact with the air? – it had vividness which was more than that of helicopters’.
Moreover, the decision of the destination was - to some extent, it could be
determined by the ability of the pilot – mostly dependent on the wind, and that
was something I could not experience with no other ways.
On the
surface of the water along the canals showed the clear reflection of our
balloon. The even land of Friesland where sheep and cattle graze……large farm
houses……I could gaze down upon the children waving their hands and the dogs
wondering what we could be were barking towards us. And such balloon flight was
indeed a fluffy and cosy trip.
Photos: Friesian Balloon Festival in Joure 2012
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| At the site in Joure |
The Friesland
Balloon Festival in Joure, the Netherlands is one of the biggest annual balloon
events in the country, and its spectacular sight attracted 20,000 visitors last
year. This year, the event was held from 25 till 29 July, and 35 balloons from the
inside and outside of the Netherlands were sent up every day during the period.
There were balloons with unique shapes as well: including Barclays House, UFO, and
Woodrow, and they were lifted one after another.
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| Clown, Sven Grenzner (Germany) |
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| City of Diamonds, Hans Zoet (The Netherlands) |
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| Coffee Cup, Neil Ivision (UK) |
References in Dutch and English
- Dreamflights, Appelhof 17, 8465 RX Oudehaske, Tel: 0513 677 999
- IkeAir, http://www.ikeair.nl/
- Friese Ballonfeesten, Joure, Nederland www.ballonfeesten.nl
- Japan Balloon Federation: http://www.jballoon.jp/
- Kamishihoro Hokkaido Balloon Festival, Kamishihoro Machi, Hokkaido: http://blog.kamishihoron.com/balfes/theme/1497.html
- Kamishihoro town official site: http://www.kamishihoro.jp/
- Furano Nature Club: http://www.alpn.co.jp/
- Tokachi Nature Centre: http://www.nature-tokachi.co.jp/
- Honda Grand Prix / Tochigi Balloon International Championship
About the structure
The articles are only written in Japanese and English for this month's issue. The English articles are a translation of selected passages from the Japanese article, and they are abridged and not translated word by word.
