After several intense waves of toy coverage, I thought it might be a nice time to take a short stroll down a cultural by-way. The other day while biking home - mama chari basket full of Kirin, Yebisu, and assorted sundry (yeah, I was doin the drywall over at the new McDon- wait wrong movie) - I spotted a proper shin dig at the Shinmei-gu shrine in Asagaya.
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These are your basic mama charis, by the way. I've heard tell it stands for "mama chariot." (Another explanation from a mami chari savvy reader: "Chari" is the abbreviation for "charinko", an onomatopoeia that means
bicycle because of the sound that it makes "charin, charin") Mama charis often have child seats in the front and/or back. If you see a mama chari barreling the boulevard, get out of the way. |
It turns out there was a two-day Bali-style festival in full swing, put on by a
local dance troupe.
So I parked old split butt (bike seat's all torn up) and wandered over to check it out. The festival was complete with food, drink, drink, some more drink, and a local Bali style dance troupe.
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Really nice turn out for the event. You might recognize the shrine as the back drop for my review of Miles Nielsen's Shishi. |
Always ready for whatever turns up in Japan, I took out my S95 and snapped some pics. Oh and at some point I went back to my bike, took one of the Kirin Ichiban's out of my mama chari basket, and left the rest there. Side note: This is truly one of the glorious things about Japan. You can park a bike with a basket full of beer and leave it there. Sure you'll want to lock the bike, but whatever's in the basket, even if it's a sack of booze? Safe as can be.
Back to the event:
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Lots of festive outfits. |
More after the jump:
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Plenty of folks were just hanging out. |
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Food tent. |
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The person in front of me was about to dive into this. |
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I think she was taking a cell phone pic of her beer. |
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Shopping time - batik style. |
In between performances, the troupe members mingled with the crowd and collected donations. I got a sense there were a lot of locals in the group, since they kept running into friends.
Time for some dancing.
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Such a nice stage. |
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Lights on! |
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You can always count on spotting some serious photography gear in Japan. |
I didn't hang out too long since to be honest Balinese dance + music isn't my thing, I'm not saying the music is painful (like Bossa Nova), but I'm just not really into the style. So I took off after a little while. Still it's always fun to experience random acts of culture during my guesternship in Japan and then to blog about it later.
3 comments:
"Chari" is the abbreviation for "charinko", an onomatopoeia that means bicycle because of the sound that it makes "charin, charin".
Japanese are crazy.
Nice info! I'll add it to the post. :)
In between performances, the troupe members mingled with the crowd and collected donations.
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