JAPANEXILE

My first of experience of Yosakoi was after the 2 Day March back in September. The town team performed whilst we were all enjoying our post walk BBQ and I was aw-struck. Yosakoi is Japanese traditional dancing set to modern fast music. Its quite a new thing, originally starting in the city of Koichi in 1954, however it is now very widespread across Japan. Towns and Cities small and large hold competitions, the most famous of which taking place in in Tokyo, Sapporo and Nagasaki. Our town team has roughly 20 people in it, but this can be any number up to 150. Team members can be any age, often all dancing together. The Toya town team has children as young as five dancing alongside women in their sixties. Who despite their age are surprisingly nimble.

The video below is one Nate made last year of the Toya dance team the Sapporo competition. The teams parade through the town and do several performances in front of the crowds. The Toya team left with an honourable mention. Which is a big deal as far as I can gather. I’ll be doing this next year with any luck!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRl697fObb4]

With the success Nate had last year with the team we were invited farely swiftly to join. It is of course optional, I’ve never been much of a dancer, but it really hard to refuse invites here, and there wasn’t any real reason to, I had the time, and wanted to give it a try whatever. Craig and I are immediately at a slight disadvantage with the whole language barrier, but copying other people can get you a long way so its not too bad. From what I can tell judging by their ability every other member of the team has been learning the dances for a while! There are 4 different ones that seems to happen regularly. But only one is the ‘performance piece’ which was introduced to me last week, around the same time I was told I would be performing in Abuta on October 27th. Which is far too soon.

No point sugar coating it, Yosakoi is hard. And I’m not very good, perhaps its a practice issue, I hope its a practice issue. Because I’m going to feel very foolish if I forget othe moves during the performance at the end of the month. The moves themselves look quite simple when demonstrated, but you need to be precise with them, arms must be at a certain angle, hands must be pointing a certain direction. And time must be kept at all times! Get out of beat and you stick out like a sore thumb. The main issue I’m finding is remembering all of the moves at once. And the pace with the music is far faster than during practice. So that’s two (quite significant) issues. I still have some time, practice is 7pm - 9pm every Tuesday and Friday. We’ve also been given a training video to watch whilst we are at home, although space is an issue when you have a kitchen and living crammed into a small house together.

The past couple of sessions one of the leading ladies Murakami-san has taken Craig and I to a separate room to practice. Which has been a massive help. I’m feeling a lot more  confident now, today was a really good session. Murakami is particularly keen for us to perform in Abuta at the end of the month and she has placed a lot of faith in us to learn it in time.

I enjoy Yosakoi, I do, really. When you get stuff right its very satisfying, and I’m rather excited at the prospect of the competitions next year. I’m just a little worried I’m going to let the team down. As I doubt any of them would be honest with me and tell me that I’m not ready!

Date is the nearest major town to Toya, about 20minutes drive South down the coast from Abuta, with a population of about 40,000. Its the first stop when any shopping is needing to be done, or meals need to be eaten. It has all the amenities, Karaoke, Ramen, Cinema etc, and about as much charm to it as a paper bag. Seriously I don’t know what the city planners were thinking when they were establishing towns up here, every major town I have been to so far looks like a deserted industrial estate. They’re all laid out in the traditional American style grid, so the car is needed to go anywhere, and they just feel, for a lack of a better word, unfriendly. Like many things tho, its the people you go with that make the place. And Shiro is always good fun. Muroran is larger again, and further down the coast again. Its best feature would have to be the “Swan Bridge” you must cross to get to it, its quite a sight spanning over Volcano Bay. It has much the same feel to it as Date, but at least the shops are considerably larger here so it redeems itself a bit.

Our first major trip to the pair of cities was on 23rd September with Shiro and his wife. Primary aim of the trip was to get to UniQlo, the equivalent of Primark in UK. (Not that I knew what Primark was until Craig told me) All honesty its a great shop (UniQlo - no idea about Primark) Good Clothes and Good Prices! Shopping as ever was painfully boring so thats all I’ll say about it. Most important purchase of the day was of course the Xbox360. We got the Core Pack with 2 Games from the princely sum of 27000Yen. Which is damn good. Only problem with the games is that one of them is in Japanese. Good Practice I guess. We of course did a little sightseeing during our trip, went to visit a Sword Museum, observed a sword being made for 10minutes or so. Wasn’t too exciting when you can’t understand the commentary or don’t really know the history well behind it all.

Like most days here the highlight was Dinner! Korean BBQ being the choice tonight! Had to wait half an hour for a table but my god is it worth it. Quite simply the single greatest meal ever. Each table has in the centre of a a bucket with some coals in, you order all the meat, and cook yourself, eating straight off the BBQ. We ate a pretty frightening amount. Shiro just keeps piling on the dishes. I felt ill afterwards and it was totally worth it.

Our only other trip to Muroran was with Hiromi camera and bag shopping. Which as ever is unexciting to write about. So I’ll write about the Game Centre we went to instead. Just as they are in Tokyo, Game Centres out here are so much fun. Its quite a legitimate thing for people of any age to spend the evening in the Arcade. Which I think is great. Spent most of time time on this pistol dueling game, mainly because I kept winning. Before we left all three of us fell into the trap of trying those machines were you put money in in the hope that it knocks more money off the shelf. Although in this case the money was actually Aero bars. Spent about 2000Yen between us - managed to win a fair few chocolate bars, even if it would have been cheaper to just buy them at the Supermarket, there was definitely a sense of accomplishment at the end.

I’m hoping one day to have more than a couple of hours to have a decent look around Date and Muroran, there must be something I’m missing to them. I can’t believe a town can look and feel so lifeless and yet still prosper.