August 25, 2012 - Super Yosakoi

Despite the heat and humidity, there were a bunch of festivals in Tokyo this weekend.  I definitely thought we needed to attend one, but the question was, which one?  We solved this problem by picking the most convenient one:  the Harajuku Omotesando Super Yosakoi Festival.  The Harajuku Omotesando area is just a few stops away from us on the subway.  I didn't know much about the festival before we went, just that there would be a bunch of dance troupes performing on a couple of different stages.  There would also, of course, be several food booths - very important. :)

Later I did a little research on the festival to know more about what we saw.  Yosakoi is a style of dance that originated in the city of Kochi, which has held a yosakoi festival every year since 1954.  It has spread all over Japan, and the particular festival we were attending has been held for over 10 years.  Yosakoi combines traditional dance movements with modern music.  The dances all use the naruko, which is a small wooden clapper originally used to scare birds away from rice fields.  The dance troupes may also make use of other props, and we saw several where a large (giant) flag was incorporated into their dance.  The Super Yosakoi festival we attended featured about 6,000 dancers in about 100 troupes.

We met up with our friends the Webbs at the festival.  The only drawback to meeting our friends is that it meant the kids were less interested in the actual festival.  There were three different stages set up on the edges of Yoyogi Koen (park) where the various troupes performed.  There were also many food booths scattered around.  While walking among the three stages checking out the dancing, we also checked out the food.  Our family operated on the principle of sharing food so that we could try more things.

My pictures from the festival didn't turn out that well.  Most of them were blurry.  But here's one of the kids and their friends with a few members of one of the troupes waiting to perform.  (My friend Whitney got a better picture of the kids with the dance troupe, but she hasn't set it to me yet.)

I also used my iPhone to take some videos, but again, those don't look that great, either.  Since I was using my iPhone, I couldn't zoom in at all.  I poked around on YouTube and found a video that somebody took at our festival.  They have snippets of a couple of different dances all put together in one video of about 4 minutes, so this can give you a flavor of the festival.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGNoEEWXNhY