So apparently knowledge of my tendency to take lots of pictures has spread a bit. I was asked to photograph a Koto Concert/Traditional Japanese Dance Performance. Originally they offered to pay me, but these ladies have been so kind to me that I declined actual pay and instead accepted lunch and dinner. (Which was delicious) I felt kind of bad because I actually wound up running out of room on my camera card and had to delete some stuff towards the end of the performance in order to document the rest of the show. (For reference, my camera holds around 1200 pictures.)
The performance was actually different from what I expected. It wasn't something that was put on for the public. Instead this was a gathering of a bunch of different performers who were performing for each other. I guess they only do it once every two years. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera set up quite right for the extra spot light that they added, so a lot of my pictures turned out a bit bright, but they were still happy with the photos I gave them it seems.
Normally I'd put the photo's below this paragraph, but I'm having some formatting issues apparently, so I'm just going to leave them where they are. Instead I guess I'll just have to label them individually, and they'll have to be viewed out of order. Before you get to the pictures, I should probably explain about the non performance pictures I uploaded.
So one of the guys here at the Kaikan rented a car for the weekend so he could take his cousins who were visiting around the area. When he got the car he was really eager to drive, so a group of us went out that night and did some exploring. We looked up a local mountain on google maps, and with the help of the Japanese GPS system in the car found our way to a graveyard that had a good overlook of the city. It was cloudy, so we couldn't see the city too well, but the lights through the fog were pretty nifty.
After the graveyard we continued up the mountain to a temple near the top. When we got there we found a bunch of Japanese Teenagers running a scare game. (Basically some people hide in the bushes, and scare groups of people walking down the path.) We decided to join in, but we were moving too fast and caught up to the group in front of us, and so we could tell where the people hiding were, and didn't give them enough time to reset. It was still fun walking up the mountain in the dark. I actually unintentionally scared a bunch of people by standing perfectly still in the middle of the pathway while people walked by on the way back down. After everybody had made it to the top, we all walked back down and a bunch of folks prayed at the temple. (I took pictures of the temple instead).
The next day we had a double birthday party in the lobby. We did potluck style again (Good way to party for a bunch of college students on a budget) I made rice again, and I didn't ruin it this time. (Though I wound up waking may too much, and it started molding before I could finish it all.) So we just hung out in the lobby and ate and talked and behaved in a silly manner. (And I took pictures)
(Oita from the graveyard overlook. It's really hard to focus my camera lens when it's so dark out. The picture is actually much brighter then what we were able to see, but it's more blurry)
(Picture time at the mountain temple)
(Jumping time at the mountain temple)
(Party poppers for party people)
(Emiko (Mary's Koto Teacher) playing an Okinawan version of the Shamisen (Japanese 3 string banjo)
(All the Koto performers playing together)
(Mary's Japanese old lady friends playing Koto and dancing. They are the ones that asked me to photograph the event.)
(A trio of umbrella dancers. I'm sure there's a lot of history behind this stuff, but the program was all in Kanji)
(Potluck on the ping pong table. See all that rice in the cooker, we didn't finish it....)
(Balloons: International sign for "Party over here!")
(Party people)
(Yannik with his party popper wig)
(Me with my party popper beard, and rabbit ear thing nose attachment)
(Traditional men's fan dance, performed by a woman. (I love the kimono she's wearing, and would love to find a similar one for myself))
(All the performers gathered after the show)
(A duet fan dance. This one was clearly telling a story, though I was a bit too busy taking pictures to piece together about what.)
