First Weekend in the Big City
After meeting the entire staff on Friday, the school warmly welcomed us with completely paid for (as I mentioned last posting) ALL YOU CAN EAT and ALL YOU CAN DRINK party at Shannon's, which is an Irish themed pub nearby. Sorry for no photos of the grotesque amount of scrumptious food or the bevy of beverages, but I can assure you I got my money's worth
Shinjuku Station
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| Morning rush hour at Shinjuku Station |
Why? ...because it's just the busiest station in the world.
How busy? ...about 3.64 million people go through it every day.
How is that possible? ...it has 12 train lines connecting to it, plus it's a hub for buses, and on top of all of that, it's surrounded by a busy commercial area.
Do I have any pictures or video to prove it? ...Yes...but I'll save that for another post. :D
Koenji Awa Odori
In the end, we went to Koenji with a smaller group people since we couldn't find everyone. I wasn't sure what to expect going to this festival (odori meaning "dance") since it was labelled as "Fool's Dance" in English. It turned out to be fantastic! An ocean of people filled the streets, beautifully brightly coloured costumes, loud rhythmic drums, and cheap mouth-watering food stalls lining the roadsides...it was a wonderful festival atmosphere.
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| Festival poster |
The dancers were of every age bracket and apparently there were 12000 of them. Every one of them was smiling and you could see how enthusiastic each one of them was by watching how passionate they were about the 3 hour long dance march (which they have to do again the next day).
For those of you who like history, here's some info on the festival:
The awaodori ('awa dance') tradition can be traced back to Tokushima in Shikoku, where the story goes that the local daimyo plied his citizens with alcohol to celebrate the completion of the local castle in 1586, leading to a citywide outbreak of dancing in the streets. Whatever the accuracy of that story, the enthusiasm was contagious, and Koenji has been holding a dance of its own for over half a century.
For those of you who hate history, here's some (9) pictures (click HERE to see the WHOLE album) and a video of what I filmed that day:
One more week till school officially starts...and fun ends...just kidding, fun NEVER ends.
