Dance Dance Daveolution!

~After another gruelling week, I've made it to the weekend. Today, after my weekly Japanese class at the city Civics Center, I participated in group practice for the upcoming August festival. Together with around thirty people, I practiced two dances: the "Fireworks Dance" and the "Samurai Dance".

This is my second time practicing these dances; I learned them last week, but didn't have a chance to take pictures. In my ongoing quest to keep you, my loyal readers, informed about What's Happening in Japan, I present:















The "Fireworks Dance" involves a lot of arm waving and spinning around to look like fireworks exploding. Then we get some disco-like action by pointing into the sky with each arm and stepping backwards! We practiced for about an hour, which was very good exercise.















I found it quite easy to remember and execute the dance steps, because I practiced martial arts for over a decade. One of the major components of karate and tae kwon do is the 'kata' or 'form', a pattern of movements, attacks, and blocks that's exactly like a dance (a violent dance).

'Kata', of course, is your Word of the Post (kanji = 型 or 形, katakana = かた ). Note that the word 'katakana' has the word 'kata' in it; I think this is because 'kata' roughly translates to 'model', and katakana is a method of modelling foreign words. I could be wrong, but that seems logical, right?

Having had to memorize dozens of katas over the years, the relatively short "Fireworks Dance", with around twenty steps, was a piece of cake. Well, remembering it was easy; actually performing it a dozen times in a row was not!

^ I managed to get a picture taken of me and the instructor (the man on the right). He's hilarious, even though I can't understand a word he says! Like many other Japanese, the instructor and these girls jumped at the chance to have their picture taken.

Finally, here's something experimental: a video I took of the dance practice. This should work for most of you, but if it dosen't run, you need the Flash Player. Please CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW to play the video.



^Remember, this is just the practice. The real thing takes place on August 1st, at around 7 pm. I'll try to get some pictures during the event, so stay tuned to David Does Japan! ~Oyasumi.

[P.S. If you enjoyed the 'video blog', let me know with a comment or email, and I'll put up more videos in the future.]