11th Asagaya Bali Dance Festival

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.

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.

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:

Lots of festive outfits.

 More after the jump:

Plenty of folks were just hanging out.

Food tent.

The person in front of me was about to dive into this.

I think she was taking a cell phone pic of her beer.

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.

Such a nice stage.

Lights on!

 

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.