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April 25, 2004
pucker up, cherry
there's something to be said for a festival where you can eat multiple shaved ices and something called takoyaki (which means fried octopus) but which contains no actual octopi. when realization strikes that you can understand the word nihonmachi, life also seems a little brighter and perhaps indicates that your years of taking japanese 1 over and over again are finally paying off. what i came away with primarily from this festival with, though, was a severe sunburn. ah, inferno, (thank you, jason).
some pictures here. taken with the good grace of jason having his digi with him and me quickly running out of film in my shutter camera. sadly though, we also quickly ran out of space on his film card and i had to keep deleting previously taken pictures. i'm pretty sure i've got some of cute little kids and taiko drummers on the other role though. which i will develop as soon as i get a chance.
the main reason i went to this festival (other than the obvious lure of shaved ices) was because i need to write a final paper for religion/culture class which incorporates first-hand experience of an asian religious festival. honestly, this cherry blossom nonsense didn't really cut it for me. if i knew who this dance group was and could prove they were doing a daoist spirit banishment ritual at one point during the performance, that might be ok. and then there's my theory on geishas, dance, and religion being semi buddy-buddy. not fulfilled by any sight seen today though. if i wanted to write about the number of buddhist boy scout troops in san francisco or an inquiry into why they had like 6 separate courts with queen, 1st princess, and other princesses than this festival would be, in a sense, my man. or, at least, my beatrice.
next weekend i'm going to go to a dance class/performance of indian temple dancing in berkeley. would anyone like to try that with me? it could be fun. i mean....it's free. and involves learning something new and possibly interesting and watching me flounder in an attempt to find something worthwhile to write a stupid paper about. this theory on devadasi (the female temple dancers) and prostitution is much better and actually founded on previous research done by others, so there's hope for me yet.
Posted by michele at April 25, 2004 08:26 PM
Comments
when you were telling me on the phone about this, i was thinking how america has its own monarchy like everyone else, except our queens are homecoming and our princesses are, i dunno, jolly green giant oaklahoma harvest fair princesses. we require royalty for our events instead of requiring events for our royalty.
not really related to anything. sorry…
Posted by: didofoot at April 25, 2004 08:43 PM
Most of the dances that go on at festivals are usually some version of a Shinto harvest/fertility thingy. Though I don’t know how that all fits in to a cherry blossom festival.
Posted by: marina at April 25, 2004 10:41 PM
perhaps in japan in a well-organized festival that might be the case, marina. but in japan town, san francisco, those dances were definitely not all about the shinto/harvest/purification. there was one (there’s a picture, they’re wearing the pink tops and black leggings) which was basically a cross between cheerleading and step aerobics. they did those turns and everything.
Posted by: michele at April 26, 2004 09:31 AM