Japan Trip Part 5

Friday is the day of our first performance. We had to get up slightly earlier, because were checking out of the hostel and into a hotel downtown. It was unfortunately raining that morning. We first took the subway, then proceeded to walk a kilometer with or luggage through the covered shopping district. The pace we were moving at really upset my knee, but I did my best to keep up.

Our hotel was just a couple blocks from the main venue. The rest of our team met us at the hotel, except one. We now had 24 people, 18 dancers. Most of us were on the 4th floor. The three of us had a double as a triple. It was a tiny room with barely any room for our luggage. It was slightly smaller than the room at the hostel, and the hostel had futons, so we could stuff our bedding in the closet, though I was the only one that actually did that. We didn't spend much time in our rooms anyways. We at least had internet, but it was wired, so we had to share.

As soon as we checked in, we had to change and get ready for rehearsal. It was still raining, and we didn't know how to dress for rehearsal so we came in our uniforms. Every other team there were in costume, but with ponchos. We were out in the rain for hours being thoroughly soaked. Tonight was World in Souran Night, when all the international teams were showcased. There were teams from New Zealand, Kenya, Brazil, and Taiwan. And despite the distance they travel, they still brought a lot more members than us. The Brazilian team was called Sansey, most were descendants of Japanese living in Brazil. The Kenyan was actually mostly Japanese. They wore yellow and black African outfits.

Right after our rehearsal, we were interviewed Sapporo TV, the major local station. They chose three of us, Austin, Michelle, and myself. Michelle did all the talking, while Austin and I just nodded and smiled. Apparently we were interviewed semi-famous model/actress. She asked her questions about yosakoi and global climate change, since the theme tonight was the environment, which was related to the upcoming G8 summit in Sapporo. It was good that Michelle did the talking because she did a great job, and came up with better responses than I could have ever done in short notice. They interviewed the other international teams too. We had stay cheerful, because we never knew when we were going to be on camera. And whenever we noticed the camera, we had to get excited and yell, like the people in the backgroud of the Today show.

The performances started at 5pm. One of the top teams actually opened with a dance, and halfway through it, all the international teams joined them. After the group dance, we were up. There was a decent turn out despite the rain. The dance went great as far as I could tell. The acts were precisely scheduled and we had to run off stage quickly. As soon as we finished, it stopped raining. We got our picture taken, then they handed on Bandai Namco Happi coats for the group dance. We waited until it was time to perform the special dance that we learned for the night. We performed it with Chapi, the extremely cute penguin mascot of this year's festival. It was very fun, but very crowded, really didn't have room to properly do the moves. After that we went back to the hotel to dry off. Our flag waiver, Ryan arrived during our performance, so Dr. John had to wave the flag. It was extra difficult because it was wet. It made me happy that Dr. John got to perform on the big stage with us, and he was ecstatic about it too.

Afterwards we were invited to a dinner with the Taiwanese team and the president of the Yosakoi festival. They had a lot of tasty food. Sadly there wasn't much mingling because of the language barrier. We actually performed for the president. The song we used for our dance the theme of last year's festival and they were playing various yosakoi songs in the background. Most of our team will instantly start dancing whenever they hear a song they know. So the president saw them and was wondering what they were doing. It was explained and had to give performance. It went well considering that it was a small stage and we were in the middle of eating. Most of us were in street clothes, though I was still wearing the pants, which I love very much, and an older version of our shirt. My knee held out even though the painkillers wore off.

Following the dinner we split up, and I followed the director to watch the rest of the performances. Once that finished, we went home to prep for the next day.