Ian Lewis' Blog

I know it doesn't look like much but it's the first snow since I came to Japan. I took the photo above on my way to work but it snowed more during the day. I guess it really is about once every two years or so you get a snowfall in Tokyo. It was also a first for my colleague from Okinawa and another from the Phillipines who have never seen snow in their whole lives. They were asking all kinds of questions like, do you use an umbrella when it's snowing? I never have but apparently Japanese people do.

This past Saturday Reiko and I went to the Awaodori Festival in Kouenji with our friends at the Japanese-English Language and Culture Meetup. Awaodori is a type of dance that originated in the Shikoku island of Japan (One of Japan's four main islands) but has become a staple of summer festivals all around Japan.

It's kind of a silly kind of dance with lots of different variations but in it's basic form involves a kind of walking where you put your right arm forward when stepping with your right foot and the same with your left. The patters emerge from that, some involving somewhat elaborate dances with lanterns.

The dancers are followed by drummers, flautists, and small gong like bell ringers. Essentially the beat of the processing dancers is kept up by the percussionists that follow them. I uploaded some movies so you can get the idea.

Anyway, Reiko and I really enjoyed it. It seems to be a Japanese staple summer festival along with fireworks and Obon dancing. Though, being a staple event in the most populated metropolitan area in the world means that the event was horrendously crowded. There was a never ending line of people coming out of the station which gave the police the rather unforgiving task of crowd control and security (in this day and age a large crowd of people is a terrorist bullseye). There were so many people that they had to set up a route for which the people could walk as to not jam up while meeting friends. But there are always those who don't want to follow the rules and go wherever they please without obeying the wishes of festival organizers.

However, managed to keep at least a semblance of a complete group, and found ourselves a nice spot to watch the parading dancers. Japan in the summertime is humid, stuffy and hot, but fun you have drinking and hanging out with friends at the summer festivals makes up for it.

This weekend Reiko and I went to the Ueno Zoo since I had never been there before. And also because I wanted to take her to the Hard Rock cafe since there is one in Ueno and she likes it so much.

First we had lunch at the Hard Rock and Reiko bought me a hat at the gift shop After the Hard Rock we headed over to the Zoo. The Ueno zoo is broken into two parts which are connected by a small monorail system. In the first half we made the usual rounds of the animals there. Reiko particularly likes the Lions. I'm partial to Bats, Elephants, and other less agressive animals. Right after we arrived we were able to see the zoo keepers feeding the elephants fruit and other goodies attached to some bamboo and listen to information about elephants in Japanese.

In the second half there were Giraffes and Alligators but by that time they were starting to bring the animals indoors so our time in the second half of the park was muted.

After leaving the zoo it was hot so we stopped for a bit in a local cafe for some frozen drinks. I took that time to show Reiko the city I was building in the Sim City game on my DS. But, unfortunately, I apparently forgot to put it back in my bag leaving it at the cafe, and have yet to recover it. It's really disappointing that after so many years of forgetting important things that I would still forget something so expensive and important in a public place Given that I bought a matching DS along with Reiko and had many games and saved files inside it's really a physically and emotionally irreplaceable item, and thus puts a damper on the whole weekends activities.