Weekendy Hijinks - part one

H'okay, so I had said I would talk about the weekend and so here it is! A lot happened though, so this will be another post with lots of pictures embedded in the text and chopped into two parts. I took a BAJILLION photos, but most aren't worth sharing, though I'd be happy to forward any along that you guys wanna see if you ask for them!

So Saturday, after a wonderful sleep-in, I rolled myself out of bed and downtown, having packed my Halloween costume and such things into a bag for later. Friday, Saturday and Sunday held the annual YOSAKOI festival that Sasebo hosts, which is one of the biggest dance festivals in Asia, with people from all over Japan and even Korea come out to compete with their routines. The downtown streets were just teeming with people, and huge groups of dancers in costume, waiting to perform or move towards the stage a few blocks further. Some groups were made up entirely of wee little children, while others were made up entirely of seniors, it was really neat to see their costumes.

I met up with Meg and her friend Erin in the arcade (the long outdoor strip of stores) where dancing was actually taking place, with groups doing their routines whilst on the move. Most of them had large speakers loaded on the backs of small trucks, with their 'cheer leader' of sorts did his part (shouting to the crowd at times, singing, and a lot of "HUP HUP!"s). The main stage and festival grounds were at a baseball diamond farther down, but all of the dancers went through this arcade first, doing their routines until they got to the end. Then they would sometimes dance again on one of a few stages on the WAY to the stage, or just in the street for any onlookers. You couldn't turn your head without seeing some dancing, basically.

While we popped into a department store in search of Halloween candy, the girls and I spotted these two dancers whose routine was basically like an homage to Rainbow Brite and the Power Rangers all smushed together, they were super cute. Some of the costumes, like these ones, were a litle 'out there', but some of them were much more on the traditional side. A few groups who did more 'gentle' dances were even wearing kimonos, but most dancers had to have more movability than that and had to come up with something else, usually something that included pants.

So after a good little while of watching the dancing in the arcade we decided to head to Yosakoi-central, a space that was usually a baseball diamond. On the way I snapped this shot of a few little girls who were part of a group with a very acrobatic routine, just checking out this stream. They were too cute!

The baseball field was divided essentially in half, with space for the stage, dancers, and onlookers to do their thing, and the other half was like a mini-village full of stalls. Games, food, souvenirs were all to be found in excess in the field. This picture doesn't really do justice just how many stalls there were, but at least you can get a small idea.


There were so many groups, some made up of maybe a dozen members, and some that were absolutely gigantic, like the group from Nagasaki University. These guys had the stage completely covered, and their routine was amazing. However they managed to keep that many people in synch I'll never know, but they actually ended up taking first place in Sunday's judging! I wish I'd taken a video of it, but alas, I was too 'into it' at the time.

Here are a couple other pictures of routines, both were groups from Universities if I remember correctly, including the crazy Rainbow Brite Rangers troupe! In Japanese there's the term 'sentai' (I think that's it), which basically refers to all 'power rangers' esque shows. So Ultraman, for instance, is a 'sentai' show, and these kids were similar to that, but it was like sentai on ecstacy. This troupe was dressed up in these really poofy black and white costumes that reminded me of harlequin get up, which I think was the point. They danced to up-beat remixes of European classical, and some of them even had little black mustaches painted on their faces. I didn't know it at the time, but one of the young boys at the deaf school I go to danced with this group! He's got some hearing, which I think enables him to do the dance, and as such his Japanese and English is actually pretty good! Here is a picture of him and his sister, who I actually teach. They're both totally sweet kids, and it was great to see them (even though I couldn't really do much more than smile a lot and wave at them).

I'm just throwing this picture in here 'cause the troupe was made up almost entirely of little kids, and we were all completely in love with the kid with the mohawk there in the middle. Well, it wasn't so much a mohawk as a huge long fistful of his hair sticking straight-up, but it looked absolutely adorable/awesome.

So after a couple hours of watching the dancers on stage a bunch of us decided to head out for food (we'd met up with Megan and Gill and a few other ALT ladies during the show), and who should I see as we made our way out? My predecessor, Brendan! That's right, the guy who I replaced who now lives in Omura. He was there with a few friends, including his friend/neighbour Brian, a nice guy from the States (can't remember which one though). Brendan (the guy on the right) ended up coming out to dinner with us to Zawatami, a really huge/fancy izakaya that we like to frequent (it was the place we went for Claire's 'pre-party party', if you guys remember). It was cool to get to know him a bit more, as I'd only met him once before. He and Brian are actually 4th year ALTs, working in a special position with Elementary kids, and they both have great Japanese.

After dinner we said 'ta ta' to Brendan and his friends, and headed over to Hitoshi's place for the party. I ended up doing the make-up for a few girls, as my costume was pretty low-maintenance and I didn't take as long to get ready as some of them. Claire and Jenny, the 'block reps' for our area and great girls, had gone over to Hitoshi's earlier and decorated the place with I think black garbage bags or something similar, cobwebs, ghosts, and pumpkins, it looked awesome! Everybody was dressed up and excited to be at a Halloween shindig, so there was a great vibe around the party, despite how crowded it kept getting as more and more people showed up (way more than anybody had expected). In the picture on the right you can see our host, Hitoshi (aka Salary-man Bot) and Alex, an ALT living a couple hours away and a chill guy (who was a thief...a slightly fruity one, according to this picture *laughs*).

For a short while Arlan and her boyfriend (slash practically fiancée) joined us, but because the drinking tolerance in Japan is 0%, neither of them stayed for too long. They're both really lovely people, and he's actually likely to get work in Engineering Sales soon, enabling him to live here with her for a good while!

So the first of us ladies at the party all took a group picture, and while I don't look particularly good in this one all of the other girls do, so its definetly my favourite (despite the atrocious red-eye). I was a schoolgirl, hence the peace signs (which I swear was only part of the costume), but people kept singing 'Britney Spears' songs around me. I knocked some heads that night, lemme tell you! "Oops, I did it again -THWACK-" :P

There were some really awesome costumes that night, with some people actually succeeding in finding ones that were gaijin-sized to fit into! Some people did it a little more home-made style (like moiself), like Jenny's awesome typhoon, Claire's creepily cute roadkill-kitty, or this fellow's last-minute frat-guy get-up (I'm sorry I forget his name, but it was Hindi and I forgot it two seconds after he told it to me. -_-;). Hitoshi's friend Tomoko (who I had coffee with a couple months ago if you guys remember that post) came as Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill, and she looked fab. People kept asking her if that was her real uniform (me included durrr) but nope, she'd made it herself, and I caught her looking particularly manic in this picture (probably from being asked the same question the whole night). I spoke briefly with a guy named Tom at the party who was dressed a highschool BOY, so I had to get a picture of us since we matched. I feel like such a tool with all those stupid peace-signs. *laughs*

So around midnight the police actually showed up, apparently having received numerous complaints. None of us were surprised, but everyone shuffled out to go and continue the party elsewhere. Everyone but me, I was thoroughly pooped by that point so I just flopped down on Hitoshi's mattress and got some zzz. I don't think I missed TOO much, since they all just ended up drinking ouside of a 7/11 until 4 in the morning. *laughs* I'm kinda glad I konked out, I needs mah sleep!!

The next day I woke up next to Tomoko on Hitoshi's mattress, with Alex, Hitoshi, and Ryo (an Asian-Canadian ALT from B.C.) all snoozing in various spots on the floor. I was surrounded by Asians!! After we all cleaned up ourselves and Hitoshi's apartment we went down to a bakery/cafe for some breakfast, where I had quite possibly the tastiest croissant-sandwich ever. Japan KNOWS how to treat their pastries, anytime I get something bread-related here its absolutely scrumptious. And here I thought I wouldn't get bread in Japan, pffft.

So, I've run out of time to update in here, school is ending and I gotta head to Taiko, but I'll update with the archery day as soon as I can (there's not as many pictures for that one). Thanks for reading!

( It's a FUZZY SANDWICH!!)
(Seriously, that guy on the right looks just like Dougie Houser. O.o)