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Aug 26 2009 22 Comments

Japanese festival fun

With August throwing up a positive flurry of local festivals, it offers the perfect opportunity for those participating to cast aside concerns about the economy as well as the coming months, and instead get dressed up and do a bit of dancing.

Japanese festival dancing

Preferably with a plethora of other people.

Japanese festival dancing

In perfectly choreographed positions.

Japanese festival dancing

With fun,

Japanese festival dancing

and the odd flourish,

Japanese festival dancing

very much the order of the day.

Japanese festival dancing

And such painstakingly prepared pandemonium isn’t just for parents either, as kids, whilst needing considerably more concentration,

Japanese festival dancing

can still manage most of the moves.

Japanese festival dancing

Although for some at least, such merriment is more than a little too much.

Japanese festival dancing

Categorized: Culture, Photography

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Steve says

    8/26/2009 at 4:16 pm

    Ha! Great series.

    Reply
  2. Rei* says

    8/26/2009 at 4:39 pm

    I love the pictures in your blog 🙂
    Do you take them yourself?

    Reply
    • Lee says

      8/26/2009 at 5:22 pm

      Thanks! Yeah, all the pictures with tokyotimes.org in the bottom corner are mine.

      Reply
  3. john ball says

    8/26/2009 at 6:56 pm

    Once again, beautiful colours-fascinating, thanks!

    Reply
  4. Bunny says

    8/26/2009 at 9:33 pm

    Good work, Lee! Hoping that you will come with me to the Kawagoe Festival, this year.

    Reply
  5. elmimmo says

    8/26/2009 at 10:28 pm

    Yosakoi! If you liked that, be prepared for the big kahuna’s next weekend, 29th and 30th of August, from noon to evening, at Harajuku’s Super Yosakoi festival. About 100 teams and yours truely in one of them! 😛

    Reply
  6. Yoli says

    8/27/2009 at 1:13 am

    This is just lovely!

    Reply
  7. Monica says

    8/27/2009 at 1:32 am

    Really beautiful pictures. I especially like the one with the little girl jumping. Very cute.

    Reply
  8. Jonathan says

    8/27/2009 at 4:40 am

    Beautiful set 🙂

    Reply
  9. FifthDream says

    8/27/2009 at 7:50 am

    That little girl is so cute.

    Reply
  10. Alain says

    8/28/2009 at 9:31 pm

    Hello Lee,

    Found your website at random and really enjoyed going through, you have some good images and text here. Good choice of subject that clearly shows you have been living here for 10 years !

    By the way, where did you shot thoses ? It does not look like Kochi to me and Harajuku s Yosakoi is only tomorrow, so I was wondering 🙂

    Congrats again

    Alain

    Reply
    • Lee says

      8/28/2009 at 10:13 pm

      Thanks Alain. These were taken in Fuchu last weekend. Just stumbled upon it by sheer chance. If I’d opted to go a little further down the river, I’d have totally missed it.

      Reply
  11. The Envoy says

    8/28/2009 at 11:04 pm

    Festivals are fun.

    Reply
  12. fritz says

    8/30/2009 at 11:44 pm

    really good pictures! please tell me you’re professional. I’m a young photographer from germany, trying to live in tokyo. looking at your pictures makes me worry that my skills are not enough to get enough yen together for the daily bowl of rice…

    Reply
    • Lee says

      8/31/2009 at 6:02 pm

      Thanks! But as much as I’d like to do this kind of stuff for a living, it’s only an unpaid passion I’m afraid.

      Reply
      • fritz says

        9/1/2009 at 5:45 am

        believe me, it is very hard to make a living out of it. It’s not really a matter of talent or good pictures, it is more that you know the right people, who’re willing to pay for it. the media and newspaper business works fine for me, but they don’t have so much money anymore, to spend on pictures. most of the time, they’re giving the editor, who’s doing a story, a little camera – if he can use or not isn’t important.

        I think you got the right eye for photojournalism, you sure you don’t want to try? 😉

        what kind of camera an lens are you using by the way? especially your lens seems to be really high quality

        Reply
        • Lee says

          9/2/2009 at 12:41 pm

          I would be more than keen to give it a go, but like you say, it’s getting those connections…

          Camer wise I use a D300, and for these pictures I used Nikon’s 85mm f/1.4. By far my favourite lens.

          Reply
          • fritz says

            9/2/2009 at 2:57 pm

            indeed, a very good camera and lens.
            As they say, it’s not just the camera that’s doing the pictures. but I think my camera is holding me back with technical limitations, I think I can do better, given a better lens. But they’re so expensive… I was saving up my money for a year to come to a japan, and two weeks after my arrival, my camera broke, so I had to get a new (and better) one. It was expensive, but a good decision, a better camera always pays off.

            anyway, I’ve been to a bon odori this weekend, and will be putting the pics up my blog soon. It was in the night, and it was too crowded to get close, but I’m satisfied with the results. would be happy if you can give it a look or comment

            Reply
  13. Angel H. says

    8/31/2009 at 7:56 am

    That’s what I miss about living in Japan. The festivals were always so fun!

    Awesome pics as usual!

    Reply
  14. Kumar says

    9/7/2009 at 10:17 pm

    I love your blog, been following it for quite sometime now. Keep up the good work. I was surprised to find three familiar faces in the above pictures, I saw them in Harajuku while they were performing in Yosakoi festival. (They belong to the same group I guess)

    Reply
  15. Kumar says

    9/7/2009 at 10:19 pm

    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3166/3029863955_45b0b9d62a.jpg
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3222/3098157853_8b853cfcb6.jpg

    Reply
    • Lee says

      9/8/2009 at 7:41 pm

      Cheers Kumar!

      Very well spotted. Maybe the performance I saw in Fuchu was a practice run for the main event at Harajuku.

      Reply

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