Summer Carnival |
In the summer a community carnival is held in the City of Odawara. A sociable neighborhood introduced us to participate in carrying the Omikoshi, a heavy portable shrine. Wearing traditional happi hanten coats and giving shouts of encouragement in time with their fellow bearers about 30 persons, we labored to transport the heavy palanquin. Despite sore shoulders after the carnival, we vow to give a repeat performance next summer.
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Watching Sumo Wrestling |
Sumo, the national sport of Japan, is a traditional wrestling contests that play in the "Dohyo"--a 15 feet sandstrewn ring. Wrestlers win either by forcing their opponent out of the Dohyo or by causing him touch the sand floor with any part his body other than the soles of his feet. Sumo wrestlers are usually tall--about 6 feet or more-- and beefy--some of them even weigh over 400 pounds--and they wear their hair in a traditional topknot, chonmage. There are six annual tournaments, with each lasting two weeks. Whenever there is a sumo tournament we blitzes through our work and then takes up a position in front of the television tube. My favorite sumo wrestlers are national heartthrobs Takanohana and his brother Wakanohana, but we also roots for the powerful new flock of wrestlers from overseas including Musashimaru and Akebono-the first non-Japanese to become grand champion(Yokozuna) in the history of sumodom. The other non-Japanese wrestlers come from Mongolia and so on. Tickets to bouts at the Kokugikan hall in Tokyo are hard to come by. We gets all the thrills we needs from the NHK TV broadcasts. Parts of the delight We feel in watching the mighty sumo wrestlers grapple ,is pleasure in knowing Japan's national sport now garners widespread global interest. Do you know sumo wrestler Akebono?
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Firework (Hanabi) |
As the typical summer night event, firework displays are held all over the country in Japan. The firework display on the banks of the Sakawagawa River in Odawara district has an audience of about 30 thousand people each year who are enjoyed by the dazzling performance.
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Tokyo Disneyland |
Located in Urayasu City in Chiba Pref. (near east of Tokyo) , Tokyo Disneyland has welcomed more than ten million visitors every year since it opened in 1983. In 1997, the number reaches a record high of about seventeen million. The reasons behind its popularity are not only the fun of the facilities, but also the excellent and friendly service. Visitors come from all over the country, and moreover Korea, China and
Southeast Asia too.
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Kimonos |
In old times, parents took special care of their kimonos, mending them when necessary, in order to hand them down to their children who passed them on to the next generation. Nowadays, with the shift in fashion from Japanese clothes to Western, few Japanese wear kimonos daily, and most people couldn't put on a kimono by themselves due to lack of training. For, weddings, Coming-of-Age Day(when 7, 5 and 3 years-olds are said to
enter boys and girls hood, 20 years old Ceremony), and other formal
ceremonies, however, many people--especially women-- wear this
traditional Japanese kimonos.
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