Taiko Festival

On Sunday I went to a taiko, or Japanese drum, festival with James and his family. Jo was there, also. I'll just post some low-quality pics instead of talking forever.



I believe this group, if you can make them out, was preschoolers, who were ridiculously good for probably not being able to tie their own shoes.



Eventually, the people running the event got around to interviewing the little kids for the local tv station. I actually didn't get interviewed, which I'm kind of happy about, but also kind of disappointed about.



I tried to get a picture of a little kid watching the show, but it was too far away, so I don't think you can see him here. At least you get an idea of how big the crowd was.







There were a bunch of groups, three of which I have taken low-resolution pictures of here. Some of them went all out with costumes and masks, with their routines telling some sort of story, though I didn't really know what it was. Some of the groups, at least, were traveling groups from other cities and probably professional.



This guy played an extremely long piece on the marimba, which was a nice change of pace, what with all the drumming. I guess they aren't really strict about keeping things traditional here, which is nice.



This guy, who appeared to be older than dirt, was playing shamisen, a three stringed Japanese guitar that sounds really weird if you have not heard it before. He was going crazy on it, like some kind of ancient Japanese Les Claypool, popping and everything. Nuts.



These two guys played guitar and sang while wearing big goofy hats. They did a couple songs, including one that seemed to be titled "'N'-town Mai," which means "'N'-town Rice." The rice in "N"-town is famous, I guess, for being really good, so this song contained the lyrics "'n'-town mai umai," a play on words because mai sounds like umai, meaning delicious, roughly. Ha ha, a good song.





Those are James's kids eating ramen. It was too dark at that point to get good pictures, sorry. I spent a lot of time playing with them yesterday. That's about it.