Japan Trip Part 6

Saturday, we had a full day of performances. We were constantly on move going from venue to venue. We started at the JR South Station. The ground was still wet from the night before, and our tabi shoes didn't help much on the pavement like they did on the main stage. At the very beginning of our dance, I slipped and fell. I quickly recovered and proceeded with caution. Other members complained about slipping too, but no one else fell. After our performance, we broke for lunch. I grabbed some onigiri from the conbi, and watched the other performances. I even got to see Toppu perform, which was the team of our former assistant director. We learned about 3 of Toppu's dances. Our next dance was back on the big stage at Odori Park. Then it was off to Aka-Renga, (the old red brick government building). We were rushing, but we actually got there early, and got our team picture taken again. This was a smaller venue, so the audience was right in front of us. We had to make sure to shout really loud and to smile really big.

We thought our next dance was at the elevated circle stage back at Odori Park. But it was actually on the street. It was supposed to be a short form parade style, which we didn't rehearse at all. We just basically did a stage style dance, which I felt cheated the audience. The crowd is to the side of the us, but we faced forward the whole time.

After that, we sneaked off to a empty road and practiced our parade style dance. We practiced it quite a bit back at the hostel, but we didn't have the whole there at the time. After a short practice, we were allowed to go explore and watch other performances.

I watched some of the big stage performances on a big screen. I actually saw a team that was smaller than us, they only had 10 people. After watching a couple of those, I watched the parade performances.

The teams will have these ornately decorated trucks, and that's why the hype men will stand. We were lucky, being a special team, we got our truck provided to us for free. We also got our $2000 entry fee waived too.

At around 5:45pm we went to dinner at a viking restaurant, which the Japanese word for buffet. After that, it was time for Soran Illusion Night. Various teams get together to perform a parade dance together. We were in the college group, which was called the Kenya group. They gave us all wraps. We were actually expecting to the Pokey Pokey dance, which they learned last year. Instead we did a whole new African themed dance. It was a fun dance once we went through it several times and learned it. The Kenyan team was at the front of the parade. This was an extraordinarily fun experience. Dancing with 1000's of other people while the crowd cheers us on. The chorus of the dance motioned for the audience to join us, some of more enthusiastic dancer would run right up to the crowd. We danced up the street first, then a different group danced up, then there was some flag battle going on after that, but I couldn't see it. While waiting for turn again, our director Seiji lead us in doing the Pokey Pokey Dance. We thought we could start a wave since we figured these people would know the dance. Only a few actually knew last year's Soran Illuison dance. Some tried to dance it with us anyways. After our little impromtu dance, one of the people that helped make the dance thanked us. He said it made him very happy to see his dance performed again, though it was different. On way back, everyone danced Yocchore, which was a dance we did know. The announcement of Yocchore made everyone happy. People were screaming "yocchore" and cheering. There wasn't enough space to do the dance properly, but it didn't matter, because there was so many of us. It didn't matter if the dance was right anyway, as long as you had enough enthusiasm. Once Illusion Night was over, we went home and prepped for the next day.