So an update is long overdue. Here’s a quick catch-up of what you missed between Hiroshima and now.
-Day trip to Miyajima to see the temple, climb a mountain, and feed wild deer.
-Night bus and JR Express to Nagasaki, then bus to Gaikokugo Daigaku.
-Meeting my fellow new JASIN students.
-Meeting my host family.
-Host brother getting into a car accident and having to stay at the hospital for two nights.
-Going to a public bath.
-A week and a half’s worth of orientation, including a welcoming ceremony, meet and greet, and meeting our conversation partners.
-Going to a karaoke bar.
-Finding a great bar/restaurant to hang out at on Friday nights.
-Learning Japanese and Chinese words for sex and poo while waiting at a bus stop after a night at said bar.
Also, my foreign friend situation is beginning to turn out like a bad shoujo manga, as I seem to be meeting (and remembering) more boys than girls.
Now for the good stuff.
So I’ve been in Japan for a month now and while I’m perfectly aware that I’m in a foreign country, I’ve not yet had a moment of epiphany where I’ve realized “Wow, this place is really different.” This may be due to the fact that I’ve been to Japan once before, or that I had a fair amount of knowledge about cultural differences before coming here. Today, my mind has been blown. I have been introduced to the world of yosakoi.
I happened to stumble upon this by chance. Today I was planning to go to the penguin aquarium with some other JASIN students. We met at Nagasaki station, but I got there early with another girl (Toni). We heard music coming from the courtyard in front of the station and went to see what was going on. We came across a group of dancers waving their arms, shouting, twirling, and jumping as a man waved huge flags behind them. We whipped out our cameras and moved in to get a better look. It turns out that it was a festival of performances by yosakoi teams all over Kyuushuu.
After a couple performances, the other girls came and watched for a few minutes before they decided to go ahead to the aquarium, while Rachael stayed behind with me and Toni. The costumes were vibrant and varying, ranging from traditional gi and hakama to flowy flamenco dresses to sweatpants and hoodies. There was a general theme of liveliness and certain motions, but there were differences within each performance. Some teams integrated J-pop dance moves, others imitated martial arts stances and motions. One group had break dancers and an all-male group reenacted old gang wars between Nagasaki and Fukuoka. The age range was really wide too. Children as young as three and adults as old as sixty were integrated in the same groups and dancing just as well.
As mentioned before, the costumes were varied and all fabulous, but some of the dances included costume changes in the middle of the number. Just a few pulls of hidden straps or tucking of the gi and the dancers had completely new outfits. One group had five costume changes in their dance. Some groups used various props as well. Fans, parasols, flags, etc. But everyone used naruko, which are little wooden paddles that make clapping sounds. Also, after the performances, some of the event organizers ran up to particular dancers and put necklaces with wooden blocks and kanji symbols burned into them around their necks. This apparently symbolizes an award for being the best dancer in the group.
The dances went on until about 4:00 in the afternoon. One dancer had been particularly energetic and held some of his poses long enough for Toni to take pictures with her camera. After the show, he came over to us, asked us where we were from, why we were in Nagasaki, etc. He introduced himself as Masa, and he invited us to join the other dancers at the park near the harbor for another group dance. We followed him to where his team was waiting; a group called Melodious, who were all in bright costumes and had performed a dance that reflected cartoonish battles seen in anime.
When we arrived at the park, we watched a few dances before everyone was invited to join in on a big group dance. Masa pulled us into the middle of it and stood in front of us, providing a good example for the dance that we were to perform with everyone else.
The energy was high as we shuffled forward and back, hopped from one foot to the other and waved our arms over our heads along with the Japanese dancers in the group with us. Masa complimented us, saying that we were very good for beginners, and the event organizers even presented us with the same wooden necklaces that the more skilled dancers had received earlier. All in all, the three of us felt as though we’d had the better day.
To me, yosakoi was the lightning bolt that hit me and made me realize that this place is different and has cultural aspects that I have yet to uncover. I just need to keep looking under rocks and in the crevices for the oysters that will yield the pearls.
For more information on yosakoi, check out the Wikipedia page. I’ve still got loads of pictures to upload on photobucket, especially after today, but I’ll get around to posting a new link once everything is updated.
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