[Japan 2015] YOSAKOI 祭り

So this week’s felt like forever, but it’s only been my first week with classes. If time keeps passing like this I’ll be in Japan for a lifetime! There’s not much that’s terribly interesting to share on my classes…

So this weekend I went to YOSAKOI Matsuri（よさこい祭り）which was a festival with organized groups of dancers from all over Japan performing their routines to remixed Tohoku folk music with or without the following:

1. Naruko（なるこ）: I’m pretty sure that a majority of all the teams all had these, and the performers would keep them in their hands and as they’re dancing it would usually clap in time to the music.

Image from here

2. Giant Flags: A lot of the groups had flag wavers that waved giant flags advertising their group name. The flag wavers were incorporated into the routine and had their own fancy moves for manipulating the flags (there was one group that juggled giant flags!). The analogy is a little bit like color guards for marching bands, only these flags were truly gigantic. The largest ones I think were about 5 meters tall. You would see flag wavers put their flags down in the middle of the routine when they have a slight pause and they’d be huffing and puffing. You could almost preemptively guess which groups were going to be good based on the size and number of flags they brought.

Now imagine something twice that size. Image from here.

3. Kakegoe （掛け声）: Kakegoe (which I just looked up) are shouts and calls used in traditional Japanese performances. It’s really awesome, and these people will like shout certain phrases at certain parts of the song, and after awhile you kinda know what’s coming too so you can shout along too (それそれそれそれ!)

4. Singers/speakers: Some groups had people who stood on the side who would either sing, or perform poetry to the music. Groups without these people would just

5. Multiple outfit changes: These people had some pretty fancy outfits already, but some of these groups took it to the next level by having multiple outfit changes. They’d rip open the velcroed part of their outfits and underneath would be a completely new outfit. The most outfit changes a team had that I counted was 3.

This group had a total of 1 outfit change?

6. Musical Instruments: One group bought an entire jazz band with them. We had no idea until at the end when we saw a bunch of trumpet players exiting stage left. Another group had a bunch of people playing Taiko drums wrapped entirely in saran wrap (to protect them from the rain).

It actually rained the day we went, starting from a light drizzle to an “boy am I glad I brought my umbrella” (which I then forgot later in the day on the campus bus). The nice thing about the rain was that it soaked the floor in the free sitting zone near the stage so nobody wanted to venture in closer. But my friend and I decided to go in and a nice old man (in the corner of the image above) gave me a towel to wipe the floor with.

Initially we grabbed paid seats that were further from the stage but it was definitely more exciting closer to the stage. You notices things like, “wow everyone looks so happy to be here”, and you can actually hear the Naruko clap, and the performers shouting. Sometimes the flags get waved over your heads. It was super cool.

There was a variety of fair food (both Japanese and not) like lots of skewered things (beef, fish, dango, spiral potatoes), lots of curry, some ramen places here and there, shaved ice, I wish I knew the Japanese names but mostly I just pointed to indicate interest. I also just ate everything instead of taking pictures.

Bonus Video!