11 posts tagged “japanese festivals”
Tokyo’s two biggest dance festivals of the year were both held today, and we attended both of them. In the afternoon on the east side of town, we attended the 27th Annual, Asakusa Samba Carnival. It's a lot tamer than the parades during Carnival in Rio, but it's still interesting to see Japanese people samba down the street in front of Tokyo's biggest Buddhist Temple. Then after dinner, we went across to the west side of town to attend the 51st Annual Awa Odori Dance Festival in Koenji; shown in the video below.
I don’t have many clients to visit this week, and the office I visited last night was so empty and quiet, I could easily hear the sounds of the traditional “taiko” drum beat of a Bon Odori (dance for the dead) at a temple in the next district. We’re now in the middle of “Obon”: the Japanese festival of the dead. Although it's sometimes compared to Halloween, ther's no trick or teating, and it's more like the Mexican El Dia de los Muertos; but it’s not quite as colorful, and there’s no scull-shaped candy, or other traditional food, for that matter. During Obon, people travel back to their ancestral homelands, to clean the family graves, and to make offerings to the spirits of family members who have passed away. People make offerings of food, and may even put out horse-like figures, made out of an eggplant with toothpick legs, for the ghosts to ride while they're visiting earth during the festival. To make sure that the spirits find there way back to earth, families light paper lanterns at their homes to guide them. To celebrate their return, people gather at public squares at night, to dance in a circle around a large taiko. When it's time for the spirits to return to the land of the dead, traditionally people take floating lanterns down to a nearby river, to cast them off toward the sea, and the eventually the edge of the earth. To read, more about the history, traditions, sights and sounds of Obon, click on the link below.
Stories and Information about the Japanese of Festival of Obon
There’s a fireworks festival somewhere in or around Tokyo every week throughout July and August, and this evening, we and 710,000 other people descended on the waterfront for the annual Tokyo Bay Fireworks Festival. No matter which one you go to, one is always just as crowded as the next. People always squat on a tarp out for hours in advance of the first shell being launched, and after the last shell has gone off it may take you and everyone else around you, two hours or more to walk a couple of blocks to your nearest train station to go home. Going to a fireworks festival can be a real pain, but it’s always such a memorable experience that all of the inconvenience feels like a fair trade-off. For tonight’s festival we went to a square in front of a new, bayside shopping centre that opened last year, on the site of an abandoned shipyard dry dock. On the perimeter of the square, a lot of the restaurants in the mall had opened up food stalls. We grabbed some Korean fried chicken, and chijimi from one, and some Japanese buckwheat noodles, chilled soybeans and ice cold beer from another, and had a picnic along with the rest of the crowd, before the show.
As always, it was excellent! Japanese fireworks are like no other I have ever seen. For one thing, they are much more colourful, and innovative. Japanese fireworks are not limited to primary colours, and there may even be a half dozen colours in a single burst. One pink burst of fireworks looked like a whole orchard’s worth of cherry tree petals blowing sideways in the wind. Known as "hanabi", or "flowers of fire" in Japanese, they were originally meant to look like a round chrysanthymum blossom. However, the shape of fireworks has evolved in Japan, and nowadays, some bursts look more like hibiscus, with their protruding stamin, and some are not even round. I have seen square and triangular bursts of fireworks in Japan, and today we even saw a cube- shaped burst of fireworks. Some are meant to represent the corporate logo of the company sponsoring the event, and some have patterns inside other patterns; giving them a 3-D look. With all of these different varieties fireworks displays in Japan generally last about an hour or more. Tonight’s show lasted for 80 minutes.
To see and learn more about Japanese fireworks and the history of fireworks, click on the links below.
The Japanese Fireworks Homepage
To help friends and family overseas, to get to know and understand Japan and my life in it, I put a number of links on my Vox blog, to informative, Japan-related websites in English. They used to be located near the top of this blog; just below the link to my profile. However, the font size of the links was so small that they were almost invisible, and probably nobody even noticed that they were there. Recently Vox has allowed us to display our links in a new, big, bold "Links" section in the sidebar of our blogs. Although the links are much bigger, I'm not sure that they're much more noticeable, because they're so far down in the bottom half of the page, and if you're a frequent reader of this blog, you probably only look at the top half of this page. But the links are there if you're interested in learning more about the news and current events, tourism, and traditional as well as modern culture in Japan. If you're curious about what the weather is like here, you can scroll down a bit more, and see the Yahoo! weather report for Tokyo, in the bottom left-hand corner of this blog.
Today in train stations, shopping centres, community centres, and just about everywhere lots of people meet, one can see stalks of bamboo, decorated with stars and colourful strips of paper, in celebration of "Tanabata": the Star Festival. According to Chinese mythology, two lovers; represented in the night sky by the stars Vega and Altair, are kept separated from each other for 364 days a year, and they are only allowed to meet and pursue their forbidden love once a year, in the sky on the seventh night of the seventh month. People believe that not only can the two lovers have their wish to be together granted tonight, but that the wishes of mere mortals may be granted on this night, too, if they write their wish down on a strip of paper, and attach it to a stalk of bamboo. Since being adopted by Japan more than 1200 years ago, the Japanese have put some of their own distinctive touches on this originally Chinese festival. For more information about the history and culture associated with Tanabata celebrations in Japan, click on the first link below. To listen to a traditional Tanabat song, click on the second link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata
http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/holidays/Jul/tanabata.mov
Although it’s a national holiday, there are no particular traditional activities, foods or traditions for Constitution Day. There wasn’t much happening in Tokyo today either, for those who didn’t go anywhere for Golden Week, but we made the best of it.
First of all, we heard that the Japan Racing Association, was having horse-jumping show, pony rides, and other equine entertainment at their equestrian training center. We thought Amy might enjoy that, and she didn’t mind watching the horses for a while, from afar, but she was afraid to get close to the horses. She liked riding the wooden horses, but pony rides were definitely out of the question.
Since the equestrian events didn’t entertain Amy for as long as we thought they would, we headed to Shibuya, by bus, on our way to a festival in Harajuku. Shibuya is the heart of youth culture in Japan. A lot of styles, fads and slang words have been born there. It’s also famous for the Shibuya crossing intersection in front of the district’s train station. Everytime the pedestrian crosswalk lights change from red to green, literally thousands of people cross the street all at the same time. It’s quite a sight to see, and interesting event to take part in. While people are waiting for the lights to change, they can keep themselves amused by watching one of the four giant screen TV’s on the walls of buildings on the intersection’s corners. Actually, almost all 10 stories of one glass-walled building, make-up an enormous television screen. It looks like the buildings in the famous sci-fi movie, Blade Runner.
Shibuya is also famous for a life-sized statue of a dog, in the square in front of the train station. The dog’s name was Hachiko, and every morning the dog used to follow his master to Shibuya Station, where he would catch a train to work. While his owner was at work, the dog would wait for his master to return at night, and they would walk home together. But one day in 1925, his owner had a massive heart attack, died on the job, and never returned to the station. For the next 11 years, Hachiko patiently waited by the station for his master, until the day the dog itself died. People were so moved by the dog’s persistence and loyalty, that after he died, the local merchants association had a bronze statue of Hachiko made and placed in the square in front of the station.
Anyway, we took a train from Shibuya to Harajuku: Tokyo’s fashion district. On both sides of the tree-lined Omote Sando Boulevard (nicknamed the Champs Elysees of Tokyo) which runs through the center of the district, are flagship stores of many of the world’s most famous designer fashion houses. Along the side streets and alleys radiating-out from Omote Sando, are the workshops of many local fashon designers and artists. At the top of Omote Sando is the enormous Meiji Shrine, which is dedicated to a former famous emperor. After lunch we went there to see an archery competition and a ceremonial dance by men dressed up as mythical Japanese creatures and people. We had lunch at one of our favorite ramen noodle shops along the boulevard: Janagara Ramen. The texture of the noodles there is just right. The tonkotsu soup is good to the last drop, delicious, and the kakuniku roast pork is heavenly. In addition to all of that, the place has a really fun, funky atmosphere. Every inch of the shop is covered with colorful, hand-drawn artwork, and they always have soulful reggae or R&B records playing while you eat. The whole time we were there, we were serenaded by Michael McDonald and the Doobie Brothers.
http://www.asiasource.org/news/at_mp_02.cfm?newsid=27391
Today in schools, offices, train stations, and just about everywhere lots of people meet, one can see stalks of bamboo, decorated with stars and colourful strips of paper, in celebration of "Tanabata": the Star Festival. According to Chinese mythology, two lovers; represented in the night sky by the stars Vega and Altair, are kept separated from each other for 364 days a year, and they are only allowed to meet and pursue their forbidden love once a year, in the sky on the seventh night of the seventh month. People believe that not only can the two lovers have their wish to be together granted tonight, but that the wishes of mere mortals may be granted on this night, too, if they write their wish down on a strip of paper, and attach it to a stalk of bamboo. Since being adopted by Japan more than 1200 years ago, the Japanese have put some of their own distinctive touches on this originally Chinese festival. For more information about the history and culture associated with Tanabata celebrations in Japan, click on the first link below. To listen to a traditional Tanabat song, click on the second link.
The Dolls' Festival is held every year in Japan, on March 3rd. To celebrate, families with girls hold a feast for themselves and for their Hina Dolls. The dolls are given offerings of small, colorful rice crackers, and rice cakes, while the humans enjoy rice wine and "Chirashizushi" (rice mixed with lotus root, bamboo shoots, carrots, mushrooms and vinegar; topped with slices of fired egg). For desert, there are sweet and sticky, diamond shaped, pink, white and green colored rice cakes. Yum! There is even a special song to commenmorate the day: "Ureshii Hina Matsuri" (Happy Dolls Festival). If you want to hear the music for that song, please click on the following link:
Aki's parents came over today, to help us set up our display of Hina Ningyo. In February each year, Japanese families with unmarried daughters, take out a set of dolls that look like an emperor and empress, and their imperial courtiers, and display them in their home until the day of the Doll's Festival on March 3rd. It's a tradition that has been carried out by families for more than 1200 years. Nobody is really sure how and why the tradition got started, but it is commonly believed that the daughters of parents who do not dutifully display and take care of their Hina Dolls each year, will be unable to get married when they grow up. It is also said that the longer you take to put away your set of dolls after March 3rd, the longer it will take for your daughter(s) to get married.
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