Life In Japan: Yosakoi Festival

The fun and excitement never lets up here. This past weekend, there was another festival here in Tambasasayama, a somewhat unusual one. Mind you, the previous weekend we had our splendiforous, annual Cherry Blossom Festival, celebrating — you guessed it — the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which populate the landscape here in the thousands. So, neither Masumi or I expected yet another festival so soon.

I should point out that Masumi warned me that this surprise festival, the Yosakoi Matsuri, is a noisy, obnoxious affair. Specifically, the music is loud, grating, and frankly impossible to categorize. It’s modern, has a big cosmic beat, uses modern instrumentation, and borrows from multiple genres — hip hop, electropop, jazz, rock — occasionally hints at “traditional” Japanese music without sounding in the least traditional. Its primary purpose is to support the dancing and flag waving on and near to the main stage. In terms of the dancing, there we see again, a blend of dance moves drawn from all over the map. There’s a short video at the end of this article, which offers the overall “look” but is not at all representative of most of the performances. It has a very traditional vibe. Most of the rest of the dancing looked like high school dance teams.

Anyway, it’s all good fun. People seem to enjoy the performance, though the music reminded me I need to carry my earplugs wherever I go. You just never know.

Here are some random shots of the festival . . .

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And here is a very short video of the type of action we saw on stage . . .

There you have it, folks. What can I say? Life in Japan, out here in the countryside, never loses its charm.