Countries Of My Life: Kamakura: Dancing All Day

The enemy from the story?

Kamakura: The city which I know the best from all the ones I've seen so far in Japan. Every time I come here, there is something new to explore. So was today too.

Together with Mika-san, I went here to see the traditional Kamakura Festival. It's an event that takes place over a whole week. The main attractions today were the parade of 神輿 (portable shrines) and the 静の舞 (shizuka-no-mai), a dance with quite a tragic history.

It was first performed by a princess called Lady Shizuka who was taken captive by the enemy of her beloved one. She had to perform it in front of her enemies and the dance was filled with such emotions for her beloved one, that she was eventually imprisoned and her children killed.

Of course, strong women are leading strong men :)
And making everything harder ;)

When we arrived at Kamakura, we could already see the parade. Many people were already on the streets, watching the shrines and their holders. I already did the same thing last year, so I know hard it is to hold that shrine on your shoulder. The shrines seemed also to be much bigger than the one I helped to carry oO

To motivate the carriers, some of the audience cheered them up. In the front of each shrine was also a person with a megaphone who did some kind of motivational singsong :D Well, at least there was pretty good vibe there. So we went alongside the parade and I got the opportunity to make some good photos ^^

Looks like they are having fun :D

After the parade was over, we went to the next event: A Noh-performance of children. Noh is a kind of classical theater in Japan, which is a combination of dance, acting and recitation. In the background is always a reciter who explains the general story. There are also musicians which give the whole performance the actual atmosphere, in my opinion.

The performance was nice, they even shot an arrow in the direction of the audience :D
We had also luck with the timing, because the Sakura trees around the place were losing their leaves, so the whole scenery felt a bit magical :)

Musicians of 静の舞 (Shizuka-no-mai)

Our last station in Kamakura was of course the dance named Shizuka-no-mai （静の舞）which I mentioned above. As I learned, the dancer is always a male person, despite the fact it was performed by a woman at first. In the time, this tradition was started to practice, women were not allowed to dance. Anyway, the dance was quite an event and everyone was eager to watch it. But with the help of my telescope lens, I think I got some good photos ^^

Performance of "Lady Shizuka"

Because it wasn't even evening, I decided with Mika to go to Ofuna, a nearby city. There we met her boyfriend and went to a slot machine hall together. These kind of slot machines are called "Pachislo" and are not like the "Pachinko" machines you may have heard of. In opposite to Pachinko, you can stop the slots in the order and at the time you want. Okay, they were getting so fast, that you could have thought this would need pure luck, but this wasn't the case.

When I tried this kind of game, a man next to me offered his help. Certainly I looked like achild who was confused with all those buttons ;) For example, he showed me that when you get the symbols in a specific order, you can get bonus rounds, where you just win over and over. And he got them already with one try on my machine. Three times! So I noticed that you need a good reaction and a basic understanding of how the slots were moving. It was actually quite funny to test and train my reaction skills in this way, even I lost all of my coins :D But don't worry, I just played for about 3,000 Yen and don't plan to do it in the near future again ;)

After a short dinner in the next Ramen restaurant, Mika and her boyfriend brought me to the station and I went home. Was a pretty exhausting day :D