Monday, July 14, 2008
A weekend of culture
Last weekend one of the ken's CIRs sent an email about free tickets to a traditional Japanese dance performance. The tickets were supposed to go to Brazilian residents in Yamanashi as the performance was a preview of what they will be showing in Brazil in September to celebrate the centennial of Japanese emigration to Brazil. I ended up taking advantage of the opportunity and saw the show last Friday.

The performance was done by the Kikunokai group and was held at Kenmin Bunka Hall, Kofu's main theater. It was my first time visiting the theater, so I ended up taking a cab to get there. Before the show started, I ended up doing an interview with a local reporter. This random interview thing happens to me often enough that it no longer seems strange. Luckily, the reporter knew a little English. She seemed really excited to be interviewing me at first but seemed a bit less enthusiastic when I told her that I wasn't Brazilian.

The show itself was nice. I brought my camera, but picture taking during the show was prohibited. I really enjoyed the costumes and some of the dance skits were quite humorous. I will admit though, that towards the end of the show my eyes were starting to feel a bit heavy. I guess I can add traditional Japanese chanting to the list of things that make me sleepy.


To continue my weekend of cultural activities, the next day I attended a yukata workshop with Tiffany. Basically, we watched a demo on how to put on a yukata and do up the obi and then got to try it ourselves. We both brought the yukatas we purchased last summer. Even after watching the demo I still had pretty much no clue what I was doing and I think that even if the deom had been done in English, I would still have no clue. Luckily there was a room full of Japanese women who couldn't wait to help out the foreigner to help assist me.





I also ran into one of the staff from my Friday school at the workshop. She was with her daughter and a former student of the school. After they gushed about how cute I was, we chatted and took some pictures together. My only complaint was that after a while, the room we were in got hot. On the plus side, the people running the workshop were kind enough to provide chilled tea and sembei.


After the workshop me and Tiffany changed back into our normal clothes and hit up a local izakaya for some dinner and conversation. Though, I think it might have made for a more interesting evening if we'd wondered around in our yukata! I'll really miss her when she's gone and hope that her replacement will be as awesome as she is.
 
posted by am at 7:29 PM | Permalink |


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