Yuzu – Tokyo Furusato Matsuri Special

Yesterday I visited the Tokyo Furusato Matsuri and spent about six hours wandering around the food stalls and checking out the performances. Time well spent! The event is still on so if you haven’t got any special plans today you might consider heading over. Here’s one of my favorites, Yuzu products from a Kouchi Prefecture stall! I love all kinds of citrus fruits but this Japanese Yuzu (I think it is also common in Korea) is one of the best! There’s all kinds of yuzu products but since I don’t do much cooking I prefer the juices and the drinks. Yesterday they had two kinds of drinks on sale. Yuzu juice is a mix of lemon like sourness, grapefruit like bitterness and a bit of tangerine sweetness, but more mellow than any of these. The PET bottle one is a little bit more sour than the glass bottle one, but both are delicious. I think I had a couple of both during the day. I also couldn’t resist sharing their ad, an absolutely wonderful photo of a boy playing in a river. I wish I had grown up in the Japanese countryside summer as well!

Bonodori Credit Union Dancers

My favorite activity above all in Tokyo during the summer and early autumn is to just randomly visit minor festival and local celebrations. Last night I visited Kagurazaka in central Tokyo and found out that there was a small festival right next doors in Sekiguchicho. A short walk and I am rewarded by a complete first for me, a corporate Bonodori dancing team! Bondori is the most traditional of Japanese summer dancers and I have blogged about it several times before but usually the dancers are volunteer instructors or locals! This time however, a dancing team from Tokyo Shinyo Kinko (東京信用金庫) served as instructors for this local festival.

When I first arrived in Japan I noticed that there were two different kinds of banks here, the normal huge corporate banks that you’ll find in any country, and a different kind of bank called Shinyo Kinko that operates like a credit union. These banks are owned by the members as a cooperative and although they need to generate a small surplus to stay solvent they do not operate for profit. All fees and interest rates are set at the lowest possible level. Recently you might have heard of the term “microfinancing” – well, Shinyo Kinko work just the same but instead of relying on volunteer work the generate enough income to be operationably independent. The boards are elected by the members from the members and function democratically. Shinyo Kinko started in 1951 as a way for local businesses and people to get small scale loans without the strict terms of the larger banks, just after the war. Cash was hard to come by and the Shinyo Kinko helped ordinary people take out small loans to start businesses or rebuild their homes destroyed by bombing. A sort of bootstrap banking, if you will. These days the same principle is being used by for example Kiva, to help raise small income families in third world countries from poverty.

It’s nice for a change, to see a bank that helps local communities to rise out of poverty instead of plunging them into it, put on a dance show. Usually it’s the other way around.

The two on-duty drummers did really well, one of them operating the main drum while the other beat out the higher staccato rhythms on the side of the drum, taking turns and being quite flamboyant about it! It was still early evening and most locals were busy eating from the local food stalls but I soon discovered at least one source to their good mood! Notice the 33cl beer can in the lower left of the pictures? Some drummers drink Asahi Beer!

I took these photos of the cool drummers and the gorgeous dancers (aren’t they just too beautiful?) with my 85mm lens. I haven’t used that one for a while so I felt a little guilty. The light was also absolutely red but a little bit of work in Photoshop fixed the worst of it. All in all, a great Saturday.

Awaodori Women – 2

Here’s more women of the Koenji Awaodori 2011! One of the great things about this festival is the fact that it is open for participants of any age, but the majority seems to fall between the 3-90 years. The reason being that dancing nonstop for 3 hours tend to be extremely physically exhausting. I can’t even imagine doing this, I have friends who are exhausted after just walking for 30 minutes, and these ladies are dancing around, violently, for 3 hours!? There’s a good reason there are no over weight awaodori veterans – they tend to turn slim pretty quickly!

The young lady in the first photo is a member of the Kaseiren, かせい連, a 32 year old team with about 86 members. I don’t know much about them but they are associated with the well known team Tenguren. Lots of great dancers in this team!

The last two photos are of a young lady in one of my favorite teams, the Kasumiren (華純連). This is one of the great Awaodori teams in Japan, they have it all, great dancers, wonderfully attractive uniforms, perfect coordination and a lively music section. Easily one of the teams to always look out for. Some of the best older men dancers belong to this team and the way they use miming and facial expressions to interact with the crowd is simply amazing! Anyone of these old dancers could be a star in any comedy movie, from the way they act alone.

More on the other teams to come, and more photos as well. Enjoy!

Smiling Japan

Yesterday I visited the annual Koenji Awaodori festival, one of the biggest festivals in the country with over a million visitors and 12 500 dancers. This year however the festival is mived to daytime rather than evening in order to conserve energy. It feels strange to see this in full daylight but the dancers did their best to keep the festival in high moods! This year the theme is Keep Japan Smiling and as you can see they did a pretty good job! The third day of the event is today and the dancing starts in about 15 minutes. Hurry up!