Skip to main content

Tsukimi (The Full Moon) Festival

Image
By
Yesterday I had the pleasure of performing in a Full Moon Festival in Hashima, a small town just outside of Gifu.  Modern Dance You Co. performed a small, relaxed dance that featured a kid's number to a song about onigiri (rice balls), Sachiko as the princess from the moon, and the rest of us as kunoichi, or female ninjas.  This is the year of the rabbit by the Chinese zodiac, so the two little girls were dressed as rabbits, and had a very important role in taking the princess back to her home on the moon.  It was adorable, and quite a lot of fun.

Rie teaches me how to take tea.
We spent the day at the cultural center getting ready for the performance.  We were able to take a break before the show started, and we went upstairs to take part in the tea ceremony.  There were manju decorated like rabbits and delicious bowls of macha, otherwise known as green tea.  I couldn't eat the manju, because although some people will swear it contains no wheat, I have not found a kind yet that is gluten-free.  This type was the closest, made with rice flour, but still probably thickened with wheat for that special manju character.  I gave mine to Rie, after tasting a little of the red bean paste inside.  It was delicious!

Below is our wonderful group, just before going onstage.  We're all wearing different obi, like I wore to the dance festival in Shirotori.  I tied my own and it was so much fun!  Unfortunately you can't see the bow here, so you'll have to take my word for the fact that it was great.  I don't have video of our performance at this point, but perhaps something will show up in the future.

Back, L-R: Nadeshiko, Mako, me, Rie, Saori; Front, L-R: Sachiko, the little rabbits, Shio.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Funnies

By
As our first year (6 months, really) draws to a close, I think it's important to display the winners of this year's worst (as in best) English sentences. Coming in third place is a very silly dialoge written by some third-years at my school.  Another ALT discovered this and thankfully showed me.  It's obvious what they're trying for but they really miss the mark: A: Hello. B: Hello.  This is H.  May I speak to T please? A: This is T. B: Great!  I'm going to prikura (sic).  Can you come to porice (sic) office at midnight? A: Yes!  Of course!  That sounds fun!  Do you want me to bring anything? B: Sure.  Could you bring some monneys (sic)? A: Yes.  Thank you for inviting me.  I'm so bad!  See you! B: You're welcome.  Fuck you! Second place is two sentences that can be taken as a pair or as stand-alone awesomeness.  These were written by one of my third year students when we had a unit on debates: A: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enter: Germany

By
We stopped in Munich to visit my good friend Martina who studied abroad in America during high school.  Munich is an unbelievably beautiful and clean city, full of spectacular architecture and interesting places to visit.  The surrounding area is made up of rolling hills dappled with stupendous castles.  Martina and her man Christian were the best hosts ever, taking us all over and dealing with us in their space for almost three weeks! The first main tourist site we visited was Hohenschwangau, home of two castles.  The first we saw was Schloss Neuschwanstein, built by Ludwig II.  It was never really completed, especially inside, as the King went bankrupt during the process.  He was removed from the throne and thrown in prison, where he managed to talk his way out for a solitary walk where he drowned himself.  It's a tale befitting such a sight and such a life.  The castle itself, shown below from an onlooking bridge, is an impressive white ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hikone

By
 On April first we began our week-long vacation with previously mentioned good friends Alan and Krista.  The journey starts in Hikone, a smaller city with one of those original castles.  More of the castle is original than Inuyama's, where only the main keep (castle building) is original.  In Hikone, much of the defense structures are also original stone.  It's magnificent to behold; here I will try to give you a glimpse of the majesty. First, let me introduce Hikonyan.  He is the mascot of Hikone (each city has one) and my favorite so far.  To the left, he is doing his signature jump.  Hmm, a cat who does ballet in a samurai helmet?  Hard to see why I love him.    It amuses me to think of Hikonyan as the cat samurai version of this samurai to the right.  The statue is placed near the train station, continuing the trend I've observed so far of placing each city's great warlord statue in the vicinity of the train station...
Post a Comment
Read more