Kakegawa Matsuri

Kakaegawa Obon Matsuri

I caught a Kakegawa festival over the Obon weekend that my student clued me into and I luckily was able to catch the tail end of the celebrations. I was a bit surprised to find, not taiko, but Brazilian samba. There was a Brazilian samba influence to the line dance, which traditionally would be a folk dance. It was a bit confusing. I tried to take it all in and wish I had a video camera to do justice. A live band accompanied them.










Japanese-Brazilan Bon Odori?

I made my way further down the street and came across another live samba band with Brazilian dancers and a lot of cameras capturing the moment. It was a bit bizarre to me. Japanese women tend to be quite modest, so seeing bare butt women in teeny tiny sequined outfits just did not seem to gel in my mind. There were men in abundance in the audience and they all seemed to have some sort of recording device going on to capture the moment.










Matsuri with a Brazilian flavour