Feet First

The alternate title for this post was "Everybody.  Dance.  Now."  While normally I would never choose anything over an Arrested Development reference, I felt like feet first made a better title for a couple of reasons.  First of all, there's the fact that my dance teacher, Azhaar, used to tell me that you should work on getting the footwork first in a choreography, that everything follows from there (not that I was very good at listening, which is why I was kind of a spaztastic dancer, but there ya go).  The second reason is that I feel like that's what I'm doing - jumping in, heedless of whether or not I'm out of my depth.  Because yesterday I decided I would visit not one, not two, but three different dance festivals happening in Tokyo.  That's just how I roll.

It started with an early roll out - the Harajuku Super Yosakoi started at 10, although I didn't get out of the house until almost 9:30.  The closest station to my apartment is Kikuna, and from there it's a straight shot up the Tokyu Toyoko Line to Meiji Jingu Mae station.  I walked up the stairs to a flashback from three and a half years ago, standing beside Omotesando, looking at the sign pointing to the Ota Museum.  I can't explain why it is comforting to be in a place you visited traveling and have it be familiar, but it is.  Following the teams in costume, I crossed the street and passed the entrance to Meiji Jingu, and almost felt tempted to walk its cool shady paths, but I caught a hint of drums and my feet carried me onwards.

When I met up randomly with Flower Boy (my dance sister's friend) at the Pikachu Outbreak, he asked if I was thinking of taking up any Japanese hobbies - his is ikebana, the art of flower arranging.  I replied that I hoped to, possibly taiko since I'd had so much fun with it last fall.  Less than ten seconds into watching my first yosakoi performance, I'd changed my mind...I wanted to be a dancer again!

I haven't really danced since I lived in Shanghai.  I miss it, but it's a little demoralizing to practice belly dance in the shape I'm in (ie, round).  Probably I should have practiced anyways, just without a mirror, but after a full day of teaching on my shitty feet, most of the time I can't even.  But yosakoi looked damn fun.  The beats of the music made my feet itch, and the dancers' passion was infectious.  I wanted to be a part of a group like that, all part of the same music.

I stood in front of the stage for a while, getting a tan line from my necklace (true story), until the smell of the food and the music being played along an avenue lured me away.  After looking at all the vendors' food, I decided what I really wanted was the biggest shaved ice I've ever seen, and they let you add your own syrup.  With my big bowl of sno-cone I followed the truck and the next group up down the avenue.  After watching a few performances, I decided I preferred the stage performances best, because you got to see the whole group at once.  But parade-style is nice too, which was reinforced when I got to Koenji station.

Of course, I didn't go directly there.  First I had to drag myself away from Super Yosakoi, which was hard - I could have stayed there all day.  I grabbed a bite to eat from the CoCo Curry close by (not really...one station was a pretty long walk this time) at Yoyogi station, and then got on the train, but took a detour when I got to Nakano station.  See, I have fairly well restrained myself when it comes to my otaku tendencies, but there's a shopping center called Nakano Broadway with shit tons of goods, and I had to check it out.  That accomplished (with zero money spend - see?  Restraint.), I went back to the train and went one station further to the Koenji Awa Odori.

And proceeded to wait (for the record, SavvyTokyo had the right time on this one, not whatever website I'd looked at that morning).  I got there around 3:30, figured out I was early, and went to McDonald's for ice cream and a place to sit and wait.  At 5, the first group started dancing down the street.  The three events I visited were each a specific kind of dance, and the awa odori had two different kinds of dances - a men's dance, in which they crouch as they make their steps, and a woman's dance, which uses geta, the Japanese traditional shoes, kind of like a thong sandal on stilts.  Both were very similar, the feet doing a kind of step-touch, and the arm posture...well, you can see, huh?

The music they brought with them.  Each group of dancers was followed by a band, with drums, flutes, and strings.  For a second, I found myself changing my mind, thinking that I'd rather learn taiko in my "spare time."  The therapeutic value of beating the hell out of a drum can't be overestimated.

I didn't stay very long at Koenji.  My feet were dying and I still had one more event to go, so I excused my way through the crowds up to the train platform.  From there, I got a bird's eye view of the street where I'd just been standing.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate crowds?  Because that for sure is a crowd, but while I stood at the side of the street, it didn't feel that crowded.  There was no pushing, and I was pretty close to the front, so except for this guy who kept sticking his head in my shots, I didn't mind at all.  It helped that the streets wound around in a figure eight, so the bazillion people who came weren't all trying to crowd into the same area, but I still write it off to Japanese civility.  I've lived in other places (which will remain unnamed) where smaller crowds had much greater potential to trigger.  Just sayin'.

My third and final dance festival was the Bon Odori in Hibiya Park.  Although I hate crowds, the thing that really made me want to stay home - or go back there early - was the heat.  I basically hadn't fully dried out since I first arrived at Harajuku that morning, and when I got to Hibiya Park, it was after 6.  From the first dancer I saw I wondered how they could dance in those costumes in such heat - it was crazy!  I decided another shaved ice was in order, this one possibly even bigger than the first.  The lady who was making it just kept putting more on there, layered with syrup.  I kind of loved her for that.

I got there just in time for the start of the dancing, which took place around Hibiya Park's focal point, a fountain...it worked really well to have everyone dance around it, sparkling with color in the dark.  It was really cool to watch it go from one stream of dancers to a river, within the space of a few minutes.  People would just join in, and I almost joined them.  It was a fairly simple dance, and I think I could have followed along, but suddenly, being there alone, I felt shy...

Shut up.  I'm actually far less likely to do wild and crazy things when I'm alone.  It means there's no one there to bail me out (legally, mentally...whatever the case may be), so I sat it out, at least for this year.

After my shaved ice and a kebab (not really Japanese festival food, but I didn't care - it was tasty), and watching the dancers for a while, I was ready to head home.  I sat for a minute to rest my feet before walking to the train (which was only 4 stops from Akiba, but I was too dead to even consider it), and an obaasan sat down and talked to me.  We talked about the dancing, yukata (the cotton kimono everyone was wearing), the English lessons she takes at a church (she's not a member, but they are really nice to her), my job as an art teacher, and the fine arts lessons she took when she was much younger, which were not very expensive, before I finally begged out.  So mark that down as my third "outside my comfort zone" moment of the day...look at all the progress I'm making!

Seriously, though...I hate it.  I don't know the kids, I don't have any friends, it's hot and humid, I don't know the food well enough (which is why we won't talk about how many times I've eaten at CoCo Curry in the last three weeks), I'm still figuring out what the heck I can fix with just one gas burner and where to shop for groceries that I know what to do with, my school uses spreadsheets for all of their planning documents...it is seriously a drag adjusting to all of this shit!  During my bus duty - which lasts an hour and involves supervising anklebiters screaming and running around and kicking balls all over the place - I might have been cursing myself for leaving Mongolia, I miss it so much.  The rational part of my brain keeps reminding me that UB wasn't easy when I first got there - and neither was anywhere else I've been - but most of all this feels like when I first got to Korea.  I was homesick, I didn't know what to eat, none of my coworkers reached out to me - hell, my Dark Lord and Master scared the shit out of me for four months! - and I was definitely not prepared to teach a bunch of anklebiters.  However, I came to love it so much that I went back three times, and each time leaving was harder than the last.  Maybe it's not a sign of anything that this feels the same...but maybe it is.  That's where my hopes are, anyways.