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.
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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.
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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.