The Always Energetic Yosakoi Festival

Here’s episode 2 of A Taste of Japan. This time, I attended a festival in Sagamihara called the Ranbu Yosakoi Festival. Great energetic dancing! Please watch the video.

I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

Last weekend, during my lunch break, I was able to go to the Ranbu Yosakoi Festival in Sagamihara, Kanagawa. Yosakoi is a type of dance that began in Kochi City in 1954 as a modern alternative to the more traditional Odori dance. This festival is held every year in September. They make plenty of noise! A lot of the music used is quite modern, and the dances are always very energetic. Very fun and uplifting.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I did take a video. And here it is. This is episode 2 of A Taste of Japan. Be sure to watch all the way through, because I have a full performance in this video.

Interested in seeing more? I’ll have a lot more Japan videos coming in the near future, and lots from famous tourist sites in Japan in October. So, please subscribe to my YouTube channel to…

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A Local Japanese Festival

I’ve begun a new series on my YouTube channel called A Taste of Japan. I’ll be making videos of different events, places, and culture in Japan. This is episode 1 of A Taste of Japan.

I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

At the shrine near my home, there’s an annual festival in September that features local dance clubs, cheerleading clubs, a taiko drum club, and singers. In the past, there’ve been professional enka singers, but not this year. I took a few videos, and now, my new series on YouTube has begun.

Here is episode 1 of A Taste of Japan.

I used Windows Movie Maker, as it appeared the other video editor I was using has informed me I must now buy it. I get roughly the same result with WMM, though.

If you have any comments or questions, you know what to do. Oh, and subscribe to my YouTube channel already!

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Isuzu Fujisawa Festival 2014

Two weeks ago, on August 1st, my family went to the 36th annual Isuzu Fujisawa Festival at the Isuzu truck factory in Fujisawa.  Since it was only 20 minutes away from us on foot, it was a pretty easy decision to go to it.

The festival featured a lot of food, taiko drums, singing, festival games, mikoshi (portable shrine), and fireworks.  As you’ll see later in the video below, we didn’t stay for the fireworks, but we did see some.  The video features mostly the taiko performance, which is nice to watch.  The girl dancing to the taiko music is my daughter.  It was her first time seeing anything like this, and she really loved it.

If you’ve watched the video already, you’ll notice that we had a thunderstorm.  It was actually quite intense with a lot of lightning.  But I love a good thunderstorm.

Okome Matsuri, the Rice Festival

The Okome Matsuri, or Rice Festival, is being held at Yokohama’s Aka Renga Soko this weekend.  My family and I went to it yesterday afternoon and enjoyed the sunny weather and plenty of food.

Aka Renga Soko is often used as the site of many events.  Oktoberfest is also there.  At the festival, there were several tents set up for food vendors, which were selling a large variety of interesting foods.  I’d like to talk about what I ate, since everyone was there for the food.

The festival grounds with the Red Brick Warehouses in the background.

Ebi kushiten (Shrimp tempura on a stick) was pretty good. I love shrimp tempura, and the sauce was very good.

Maguro gyoza (tuna gyoza) was an interesting food. Usually, gyoza has pork and vegetables in it, this had tuna. It was quite good.

This was some of the food, including mabodofu (at top), maguro gyoza, pork, ebi kushiten, and some tomato dish which I didn’t eat. At the bottom was nori.

Grilled chicken with onion sauce was delicious. I love grilled chicken!

Tenkara, which is karaage (fried chicken), was very good. It seemed to have a bit of a garlic flavour.

In addition to the above food, we also had 6 kinds of rice.  There were 12 types of rice available, but we chose 6.  Honestly, I didn’t find much of a difference between them.

Other people enjoying the festival.

Some of the vendors.

One last picture. The sign says “Okome Matsuri.”

There was a lot of good food, and I enjoyed trying it.  I filled up on rice and plenty of meats.  It’s running until tomorrow (November 18), so if you want to check it out, I definitely recommend it.

Sanma Matsuri and Typhoon 17

On September 30th, there were two events.  One was local, the other was major.

First, in Ofuna, Kamakura, there was a big festival.  This was the Sanma Festival.  Sanma is the Japanese name for a fish called Pacific saury.  But not only was this a festival about a small fish that’s grilled on a stick, it’s also a friendship festival between Ofuna and the city of Ofunato in Iwate prefecture.  Ofunato was one of the cities devastated by the tsunami of March 11, 2011.  Ofuna and Ofunato share the same kanji (大船 and 大船渡).  I managed to take a few pictures of it that afternoon.

It’s a busy festival with lots of food.

This intersection was being controlled so festival-goers weren’t hit by traffic.

This banner flag says “Sanma matsuri.”

Look at all that food.

Finally, a picture from down on the street.

The festival ended at 3pm, which is quite early.  The reason was that Typhoon 17 (Jelawat) was on its way.  When it hit Okinawa, it was equivalent to a category 4 hurricane, and was called a super typhoon.  There was plenty of damage and power outages in Okinawa, but in the Tokyo area, we didn’t have to worry very much.  It rained a lot and the wind was strong, but it was pretty brief.

A wet window during the typhoon.

2012 Picture of the Week (32/52) – Warabi Festival Decorations

On Friday, I went to the Warabi Matsuri (Festival) for the 3rd year in a row. This time, we went right at the beginning of the festival. Very little food was available and they were still putting up the decorations. This is one of the bigger decorations that was still waiting for installation.

I was standing under this with my head in the gold streamers.