Back tracking

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!