Awa odori festival

Aug 14, 2010

We went to the Awa odori festival yesterday, as promised.
The festival was grand and it was heavily packed with people...literally everywhere! To tell you the truth, this is the one and only time we get to see so many people in Tokushima. Believe me.

There were a few stages for the Awa odori performance. It is sort of a ritual for the dancers to hop from one stage to another stage. To the viewers, we can either buy a ticket to watch the stage performance or if you like hopping from one place to another, just join the crowd and walk around as you wish, which was pretty much the idea we had in mind that day.

We cycled to the city center, which was about 20 minutes by bicycle. Bicycle is the best mode of transportation during this festive season since a few roads would be closed and it would be difficult to get parking too.

Sya in Jinbei...Japanese traditional wear.

Many different designs of Yukata representing different ren (team)

Gold fish scooping, a popular activity during festive seasons in Japan

Estimated hundreds of stalls were set up, serving food and games

Sya's favorite shaved ice with flavored syrup

Among the food stalls

We decided to have takoyaki for break fast

One of the performance stages

In cases of emergency...

Performing Awa dance on the street

They were really good!

The endless crowd

Stages and stalls along the river

LED lighting, made Tokushima people proud (Shuji Nakamura is from Tokushima)

Maybe because we were fasting, we realized we didn't get the essence of the Awa odori festive atmosphere from yesterday's photos. We were quite shocked to discover that most of the photos we took were of food! Cheh...mentang mentang puasa katakan.

So sharing you below are a few pictures taken during the past Awa odori festival.

Me wearing Japanese Yukata and met up with Japanese friends two years ago

Fooling around

Takoyaki anyone?

3 comments:

Lee said...

Hi Nana, harigato gozaimas for the name. Will check her out. Found her by fluke.
Oh ya, I love Frank Nagai too. Have couple of his CDs.
I love your pics here and you and family look real good in Japanese clothes, ha ha.
Love the bicycle pics.....and the pics of the festival are really fantastic.
Without you posting this, I'll never know....
Thank you for the kind invitation....re buka puasa, ha ha.
You have a nice day and once again, terima kaseh for her nama. Lee.
ps, will delete your message as you requested. No problemos.

Lee said...

Hi Nana, thanks to you I have 10 of her songs playing now, all oldies, my favourites.
Really love her voice, so melancholy.
Harigatogosaimazu. Lee.

Nana said...

Hi Uncle Lee.
Oh...I am very glad you found what you wanted. It was nothing really. It was my pleasure to be of any assistance. Will drop by your 'pondok' and listen to her songs later...:)

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