Japanese Festival 2008 (the aftermath thereof)

I am a goddamn Bon Odori dancer. Oh hell yes. d(>ω<)b

Ku is somewhere in this picture.

The Missouri Botanical Garden held it's annual Japanese Festival this past Labor Day weekend, and for the first time evar (EVAR~!) I got to participate. ^-^

My younger sister and I are first-year members of a local Tozan Ryu group (for dancing, not shakuhachi), and we were privileged to perform dances for the Obon festival along with the rest of the troupe and about 200 festival attendees who, bravely, accepted sensei's challenge to dance along with us.

Obon (お盆) is the big autumnal holiday in Japan. It's similar in intent to Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico, but different, of course, in style and execution. Obon comes with its own special music called ondo (音頭) and a collection of dances that are simply referred to as Bon odori (盆踊り), literally, "Obon dances." There are songs and correlating dances about all kinds of things, including (but not limited to) famous cities, coal miners, fireworks, traditional clothing, wishes for good fortune, and Pokemon.

Yes, Pokemon. And many other anime.

Besides dancing, there were lots of other lovely attractions as well:

Ikebana...

...and bonsai...

...and fans of kimono...

...and adorable Asian children...

...and a master of the deceptively difficult Japanese koma tops...

...and ♥origami♥...

...and a f*ck ton of Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures which are on loan to the gardens and have nothing to do with the Japanese festival, but were still photographically interesting...

...and more cosplayers than there should have been, so I didn't take pictures of them. XD

I hope you've all had an equally lovely weekend. If you should find yourself near St. Louis this autumn, please consider visiting the gardens; they're fantastic. 超すばらしい〜

Paperhead

One of the reasons I decided it was time to start a blog was so I'd be able to share my “stuff” with the online community. That was one of the reasons why I started a DeviantArt page, too, only DA is for... well, art. Illustrations and fine photography, that kind of thing.

Most of what I do these days is either design-related, or one of the many crafts that I've gotten addicted to over the years. For example, my first love: origami.

I've been an origami nut since childhood. There was a Honda plant near our home in Ohio, and Japanese executives who came over to manage the factory brought their families along with them. The result was a relatively large population of Japanese students in the elementary school I attended. They (and their very gracious mothers) shared the Japanese culture with us through snacks, crafts, and toys.

The school library built up a healthy collection of origami books. We prepped our own squares from sheets of notebook paper, or stole sheets of neon pink and orange from the teachers' copy room to get colors.

I remember folding origami on the playground with a Japanese boy named Yoshi. He didn't know any English, and I knew no Japanese, but we could communicate just fine by watching each other's hands working with the paper. He taught me how to make a flapping crane and all sorts of boxes. In fifth grade, a girl named Emi Kida introduced me to modular origami. She shared real origami paper with me and showed me how to put Sonobe units together; the concept totally blew me away. I was hooked.

Since those days, I have photocopied origami books, cover to cover, from libraries in six cities across two nations. I have built up a digital library of origami diagrams that currently stands at 2.4 gigabytes.* I have collected at least 300 different prints of chiyogami and washi, many of them from small shops scattered throughout Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Toyota-shi, Kamakura, and Nikko. Someday, I will join the Tanteidan.

In the meantime, I like collecting the lesser-known traditional models that I come across. This one, taught to me as the orei tsuru (お礼鶴) by a grandmother in Shizukuishi, Iwate, is cute and simple. Orei means “gratitude” in Japanese, and tsuru means “crane.” If you find yourself with a square piece of paper and a few minutes of free time, I hope you’ll download the diagrams and try it.

*If you are looking for the diagrams of a particular model, let me know – If I have it, I’ll send it!