I went to RISING SUN ROCK FESTIVAL 2022. It was the first time in three years due to the pandemic, and the first time in four years for me. Since it had been a while, I decided to go only on the first of the two days.
Until four years ago, I had no other means of transportation, so I used the shuttle bus. The downside of the shuttle bus is that it's quite crowded and exhausting on the way back. However, I am no longer the person I used to be. I now have a Mira e:S that I begged my mother to give me two years ago when she switched to a new car. So, this year, I bought a parking pass and decided to try going to Rising Sun by car for the first time.
On the day, I managed to wake up early and left home at 7:00 AM. I headed toward Ishikari alone. The weather was great—perfect festival weather. Perhaps because I left early, the roads were quite empty, and I was able to arrive near the venue smoothly. I entered the parking lot following the instructions of the staff standing at the corners.
The ground inside the parking lot was unpaved, and since it had rained until the day before, the paths were large puddles of mud in places. One might have predicted this situation if they had thought about it a little, but it hadn't crossed my mind at all. I suddenly became anxious: would my 2WD Mira e:S be okay? But I had no choice but to go.
Steeling my resolve, I pushed forward with momentum. The Mira e:S groaned and roared but somehow managed to overcome the mud. I breathed a sigh of relief and parked in an empty spot.
When I got out of the car, not only were the tires covered in mud, but the car was also splattered with mud from the side mirrors to the windshield. What a wild way to get dirty. For a Mira e:S that had spent years as my mother's commute and shopping vehicle, overcoming mud and being splattered must have been an unknown experience. The light pink body of the car almost seemed to be blushing, as if saying, "This is my first time!" at the stimulating experience.
Leaving that innocent and cute Mira e:S in the parking lot, I passed through the entrance gate and entered the venue. It was incredibly sunny, and the sunlight pierced my skin. At one point, when I tried to reapply sunscreen and squeezed it onto my arm, the contents had become piping hot because I had kept it in the outer pocket of my backpack, and I suffered through what felt like a new form of torture.
Since it had been a long time since I'd been to a festival or even a live concert, I was freshly moved by hearing live music. I ate festival food to my heart's content, reunited with a senior from university for the first time in years, and was treated to a beer, having a wonderful time.
At night, after the last stage ended, my Rising Sun was over. All that was left was to sleep in the car until morning and go home. As I packed my things with a feeling of fulfillment and headed toward the parking lot, I realized something terrible. I didn't remember where I had parked my car at all. I held my head in my hands at my own stupidity for leaving the parking lot in the morning without thinking.
The parking lot had no numbers assigned at all and, above all, was vast. Moreover, it was nighttime with almost no lights. And as mentioned before, the ground was muddy in places. I now had to walk around this vast parking lot in the dark, being careful of my footing with this exhausted body, to find my one and only car. I felt dizzy at the daunting task, but I had to do it if I wanted to sleep.
Since walking around aimlessly would be inefficient, I decided to go with a search-grid strategy. I started from the area I thought was likely the right direction and probably no further than where I had parked, and searched row by row, leaving no stone unturned. Setting my resolve, I started walking the first row while pressing the button on my smart key. The plan was to look for the lights that flash once when the smart key responds. As expected, the surroundings were dark and the footing was bad. If I were to trip and get covered in mud, the hardship would only increase. I moved cautiously but as quickly as possible, pressing the smart key. As I pushed forward, a light suddenly flashed in my field of vision. No way, I thought, and pressed the smart key again. It flashed. Approaching with disbelief, there was my Mira e:S, still covered in the morning's mud splatters.
Unbelievable. Out of dozens of rows of parked cars, I hit the jackpot on the first try. I was incredibly lucky. I took pride in my strong luck. Then, I reclined the driver's seat, fully utilized my ability to sleep anywhere, and immediately fell asleep in a very good mood.
When I woke up, it was just after 4:00 AM. It's a time I would never normally wake up, but perhaps because the morning sun was shining in, I woke up so refreshed that I didn't think about going back to sleep.
As is usually the case for anyone in the morning, I had a strong urge to urinate. However, the toilets were near the entrance gate, which would mean walking a considerable distance back from here. In that case, it would be faster and easier to just leave and stop at a nearby convenience store. I'd buy breakfast while I was there to borrow the restroom. Having decided that, I started the car and pulled out into the path—and that's when it happened.
The sensation of the car body sinking with a thud. Yes, mud.
I thought, "Oh no," but the Mira e:S and I had somehow overcome the mud yesterday while getting splattered. It'll be fine, it'll be fine. I backed up once and tried again. But the car wouldn't move forward at all. Back up, floor it. Back up, step on it slowly. After repeating this many times, eventually, I couldn't even back up anymore. The Mira e:S groaned. I panicked. It seemed that the mud, which was still watery yesterday, had been exposed to the scorching sun, causing the moisture to evaporate and turning it into a much more viscous mud. This was bad.
Perhaps awakened by the noise, two women who were parked nearby got out of their car and called out, "Are you okay?" "Should we push?" I answered pathetically, "Is that okay? I'm so sorry." Seeing this, people started pouring out of other cars, and one man, diagnosing the situation from the car's posture, decided, "It looks better to go backward," and five people ended up pushing the front of the car. With a shout of "Heave-ho!", the five pushed the car body while I put it in reverse and stepped on the gas.
It was my first time being the party involved in "having people push a stuck car to escape," but this felt wrong. What was wrong was that while kind strangers were getting covered in mud out of goodwill and for free to push the car, the person who got it stuck was sitting in the safe interior, just stepping on the gas with a stupid look on her face. What is this distortion of labor? It was far too apologetic. At the very least, unless I was stepping on the gas while someone was putting me in a headlock from behind, the balance wouldn't be right.
And to say something even more apologetic, honestly, I had to pee. I really had to pee. A struggle between the desire to escape the mud and the desire to pee. That said, even with skin as thick as cheese naan, I couldn't bring myself to say, "I need to pee, so could you wait a moment?" While facing the people pushing the car for me, most of my consciousness was currently in my bladder. It was truly apologetic to be stepping on the gas with a heart full of such urinary urgency. If it was going to be like this, I should have gone to the toilet first instead of being lazy. Putting things off is never good.
They pushed for a while, but it seemed the front wheels were completely buried and escape was impossible. We decided to give up, with someone saying, "It's better to leave this to the pros." I felt a sense of regret that we couldn't do it, but honestly, I thought, "Good, now I can go to the toilet." I'm glad the people who gathered didn't have Slam Dunk as their life bible. If they had been saying, "If you give up, the game is over right there!" I surely would have wet myself in the car. Honestly, it was already time to panic. I think it was really good that they were very kind and gave up at an appropriate time. I handed out wet wipes and bowed deeply, saying, "Thank you so much."
After the kind people dispersed, I rushed to the toilet and managed to avoid a disaster regarding the urine. Returning to the car, I called the insurance company's 24-hour roadside service.
"Thank you for calling. This is △△ at the ○○ Insurance Service Center."
A man with a calm tone answered the phone. When I told him the car was stuck in mud, he asked several questions to check the condition of the vehicle, which I answered.
"Understood. We will send staff from a partner company, so please give me the address of your current location."
I gave the address of my current location I found on Google Maps and added, "Um, it's the parking lot of a festival called Rising Sun Rock Festival..."
"Rising Sun Rock Festival, you say..."
It was currently 5:00 AM. It was beyond painful to convey such a festive official name to a man on the phone who was likely working through the night at the service center. Also, by saying it out loud myself, the reality that I had gotten stuck in mud at a festival hit me intensely, and I felt terribly pathetic. However, now that it had come to this, I had no choice but to accept the fact that I was stuck in mud at a festival and ask for help.
"Well, there are two parking lots, Heaven's Parking and Forest Parking, and I'm at Heaven's Parking."
While stuck in the mud, I explained my current location as "Heaven." Where exactly was the heaven?
I was told it would take about an hour for the contractor to arrive. During that time, the university senior who had treated me to beer yesterday came to the parking lot, brought me a meat bun, and suggested we play Mario Kart to kill time, so we played Mario Kart on the Switch. While looking at my own car that was stuck and couldn't move, I made my machine run briskly. I wished a turtle on a cloud would hook my car and pull it back onto the track, but in reality, I had no choice but to wait for the contractor.
Shortly after my senior returned to the venue, the contractor arrived. The man from the company, who arrived in a large truck, was stunned by the condition of the parking lot, which was full of mud everywhere, saying, "This is terrible!" Yes, even if I escaped this stuck spot, I had to cross several more mud puddles before reaching the exit of the parking lot. The man looked around and thought of a route where the mud seemed as manageable as possible. Not only was he letting me escape this stuck spot, but he was also going to support me until I left the parking lot—he was no longer just roadside service, but a mud concierge. I knew I'd be fine if I followed this person.
"Okay, let's pull it out backward for now and turn it around this way."
Following the concierge's instructions, I got into the driver's seat.
"Put it in neutral~"
"Yes!"
"The parking brake is down, right?"
"It's down!"
"Turn the wheel a little to the right."
"Yes!"
"The other way, the other way!"
"Sorry!"
I responded to the concierge's calls with the volume of a girl's volleyball club member. The Mira e:S was pulled backward by a wire and finally escaped the mud. The sensation of the car moving without me doing anything was fresh, and being at his mercy was strangely funny, making me a little giddy.
After that, I followed the concierge's instructions, sometimes having him lead the way, as we aimed for the parking lot exit. On the way, he said, "It looks okay here, so let's cross the mud," and I proceeded, only to get stuck again and have to be towed out once more. Truly, I was a handful of a customer.
Thanks to the mud concierge's hands-on and devoted work, I somehow managed to reach the exit of the parking lot. I am truly grateful to the concierge who came to help from early in the morning.
As I was leaving, the concierge gave me some advice: "It's not good for the car, so you should wash the mud off right away." So I searched and stopped at a nearby car wash. People who put a lot of time and effort into their cars might want to hit me for saying this, but I had never washed this car once since I started owning it two years ago. At my first coin-operated car wash, I instinctively stepped back at the sheer water pressure as soon as the water came out. I felt like a firefighter as I manipulated the hose, and it was fun to watch the mud fall away and the car become clean before my eyes. Following my first time getting stuck and my first time being towed, it was my first car wash. It was hard, but everything is an experience.
At 33, my great summer adventure ended safely as I returned home in my clean car. The Mira e:S, which had overcome the hardships with me, looked shiny and somehow proud. I feel bad for the Mira e:S, but if I go to Rising Sun again next year, I will definitely borrow my husband's Jimny.
(From note, August 18, 2022)
My first essay collection "Wazawaza Kaku Hodo no Koto da" is now on sale from Futabasha!
