Oookay
Today`s backlog is Yosakoi Soran!!!
Basically, its the freaking sh--
er... its f--..eh..
its really really great!
I`ll try to do a bit of what I understand as the explanation. It start in fishing villages or something, `soran` being the term/word/saying of the action of pulling fish in to the boat..ish..I think I could be wrong, but thats what I thought. You know what, I`ll just find a wiki-link...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosakoi
Its dancing...except dancing on crack, think your stereotypical Japanese dedication and you`ll imagine how awesome it was to see these highly choreographed dances.
I can`t vouch for any of that besides that I saw the Sapporo festival, which was freaking sweeeeet. Apparently its a huge tourist draw. Hokusei has a team, and may I say there were awesome? They did this costume change half way through...it was great! One of my friends here is on the team that won two years in a row, and let me tell you, they were cool. Er... I`m running out of appropriate descriptor words. This is getting awkward....Ah..let me show you..i think...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWd_c7niTxs
This was Hokusei`s team!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-D0BIPSgWI&feature=related
this one was the winning team, actually starts the dancing around 1;43
This festival is definitely one of the things thats going to stand out about my experience here in Sapporo.
Funnily enough, recently I went on a bus tour to the Shakotan area of Hokkaido. Shakotan is west and I got to see some ocean action, which was fantastic. Randomly enough, at one of the stops Shakotan was having their own actual Soran festival, and the Hokkaido university yosakoi dance team was there, as well as the winners of the festival, (which my one friend is in) imagine our mutual surprise.
Still, I got to see two great dances live..-again- and this time without the huge crowd. Yay bus tours.
Eh, gotta run again, more on the random bus tours Ive been on later, definitely check out what I posted about Yosakoi!! Until next time, later!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Oh hey..
So ...apparently I`m supposed to be keeping up with this or something...who knew, huh? Sorry any and all who actually read this, its not that Ive been extra busy or nothing at all has happened...its just..well...Im lazy.
Reality hurts sometimes...anyway.
I think I`ll tell you all about Hiroshima. But first, let me say that today is the second day in the row its been around 28ish degrees Celsius. Do the math, its nice. Real nice.
SO. Me and three of my fellow BCA students went to Hiroshima over Hokusei`s sports festival long weekend! We flew from Sapporo to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Hiroshima on Wednesday. From the airport, we took a bus to Hiroshima station, which was pretty close to the hotel, so lucky us. If memory serves we hung out at the hotel, since it was kinda too late in the day to start anything
THURSDAY! We first went to breakfast, which was buffet style, which was nice. Afterward we made our way to the Hiroshima Peace Park via..what are they called...cable cars? Yeah..those things. Anywho, the peace park was pretty fantastic. First, it was big, and pretty. Also like...apparently all schools by Hiroshima do field trips so there were hundreds of little kids running around, some saying `Harro` in varying degrees of correctness to us. They usually got a kick out of us responding in the appropriate Japanese. The A-bomb peace museum itself was incredibly powerful. I don`t think I could quite do it justice..but I`m sure you could imagine what a museum dedicated to the horrors of the atomic bomb would be like, yeah? Very powerful to say the least. It turns out Hiroshima is the leading city (or something) in advocating for the disuse of nuclear weapons. Sort of figures....but hey, the more you know, right?
We did various shopping and walking around afterwards, it was a good time. The next day we went to Miyajima, which was awesome. Its this island a ferry-ride away from the city area. The one word I could probably use to describe it is touristy. They have soooo many shops with the exact same products in them. It was insane, but a good kind of insane. -My- kind of crazy. Anyway, there were also wild deer roaming around, so we had to watch where we were stepping. After the ferry ride we walked to the cable cars that brought us to the top of Mt. Misen! The main reason I wanted to go up there was to see the wild monkeys...unfortunately, the monkeys were in the forest eating, or so the signs said. NOT a single monkey to behold, and we did a lot of hiking (in not-hiking clothes) in thejungle with the giant bugs.
It was sort of fun though....
anyway, we went down and on the way I saw someone from the peace museum in another cable care, which prompts this tiny side story: I notice that wherever we go to visit, like when we were all in Honshu, you end up seeing the same random people from other sites since youre all hitting the same tourist areas, its kinda funny.
Where was I? Oh, we got back down and...OH. okay, so there was this giant Torii Gate (a red gate .....er..hard to explain, google it) that is in the middle of the sea...well not quite the middle but you can walk out to it during low tide, and when we got down it was low tide so..I ..walked...to it..
you following?
Yeeesh. anyway...yeah...it was cool.
I think I fail at blogging. That was pretty much it for Hiroshima, we werent there long, but it was a good trip, sorry for the lack of play by play... Anyway, currently, as I said, its a beautiful day out. I have class in about ten minutes, but not to worry, its a short one. (I knew you were)
I have about 3 weeks left, 3 WEEKS!? Yikes, the time flies. Im excited to go home but I can`t imagine leaving Sapporo. It has been surreal. I continue to love my host family. They recently gave me a I cant spell it..its like an old japanese two piece of clothing, you dont really wear it out but its okay to have...and wear inside..and for old people to wear..
yeah..
anyway, gotta run, Ill try to update more .... and not be such a bum
Reality hurts sometimes...anyway.
I think I`ll tell you all about Hiroshima. But first, let me say that today is the second day in the row its been around 28ish degrees Celsius. Do the math, its nice. Real nice.
SO. Me and three of my fellow BCA students went to Hiroshima over Hokusei`s sports festival long weekend! We flew from Sapporo to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Hiroshima on Wednesday. From the airport, we took a bus to Hiroshima station, which was pretty close to the hotel, so lucky us. If memory serves we hung out at the hotel, since it was kinda too late in the day to start anything
THURSDAY! We first went to breakfast, which was buffet style, which was nice. Afterward we made our way to the Hiroshima Peace Park via..what are they called...cable cars? Yeah..those things. Anywho, the peace park was pretty fantastic. First, it was big, and pretty. Also like...apparently all schools by Hiroshima do field trips so there were hundreds of little kids running around, some saying `Harro` in varying degrees of correctness to us. They usually got a kick out of us responding in the appropriate Japanese. The A-bomb peace museum itself was incredibly powerful. I don`t think I could quite do it justice..but I`m sure you could imagine what a museum dedicated to the horrors of the atomic bomb would be like, yeah? Very powerful to say the least. It turns out Hiroshima is the leading city (or something) in advocating for the disuse of nuclear weapons. Sort of figures....but hey, the more you know, right?
We did various shopping and walking around afterwards, it was a good time. The next day we went to Miyajima, which was awesome. Its this island a ferry-ride away from the city area. The one word I could probably use to describe it is touristy. They have soooo many shops with the exact same products in them. It was insane, but a good kind of insane. -My- kind of crazy. Anyway, there were also wild deer roaming around, so we had to watch where we were stepping. After the ferry ride we walked to the cable cars that brought us to the top of Mt. Misen! The main reason I wanted to go up there was to see the wild monkeys...unfortunately, the monkeys were in the forest eating, or so the signs said. NOT a single monkey to behold, and we did a lot of hiking (in not-hiking clothes) in thejungle with the giant bugs.
It was sort of fun though....
anyway, we went down and on the way I saw someone from the peace museum in another cable care, which prompts this tiny side story: I notice that wherever we go to visit, like when we were all in Honshu, you end up seeing the same random people from other sites since youre all hitting the same tourist areas, its kinda funny.
Where was I? Oh, we got back down and...OH. okay, so there was this giant Torii Gate (a red gate .....er..hard to explain, google it) that is in the middle of the sea...well not quite the middle but you can walk out to it during low tide, and when we got down it was low tide so..I ..walked...to it..
you following?
Yeeesh. anyway...yeah...it was cool.
I think I fail at blogging. That was pretty much it for Hiroshima, we werent there long, but it was a good trip, sorry for the lack of play by play... Anyway, currently, as I said, its a beautiful day out. I have class in about ten minutes, but not to worry, its a short one. (I knew you were)
I have about 3 weeks left, 3 WEEKS!? Yikes, the time flies. Im excited to go home but I can`t imagine leaving Sapporo. It has been surreal. I continue to love my host family. They recently gave me a I cant spell it..its like an old japanese two piece of clothing, you dont really wear it out but its okay to have...and wear inside..and for old people to wear..
yeah..
anyway, gotta run, Ill try to update more .... and not be such a bum
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
