Yosakoi!!

Tuesday I went to Yosakoi (the dancing festival I mentioned in an earlier blog). I went with the Shimanto Town dance group called Yui to watch them perform. They were good! It was really cool watching the different groups do their dances. We even got to see the first place group from last year. I've put some videos and pictures here. The red, tan, and blue outfitted dancers are the Yui group from my town, and the pink and purple with stripes on the back is the first place group from last year. Any other groups I don't know. You HAVE to watch the video of the really good guys from last year that I filmed (it's the very last video at the bottom of the page).
They are a-MAZE-ing. (the video and sound are off by a fair amount of seconds when I play some of the videos so maybe it will be when other people play it too, which is really too bad, because they are really good) While these guys were hard core awesome, there were other groups that had just students, or had old people and children dancing alike. The little kids dancing were the cutest things ever. After watching a few groups go, it was our groups turn and then we went to the bus to go do the same dance down around six different streets. Marisa and I were all of a sudden given naruko (the traditional wooden clappers used to dance in Yosakoi) and told to follow behind out group and try to do the dance. So Marisa and I, bringing up the rear, paraded down the street in our normal clothes, looking ridiculous as we tried to imitate the people in front of us and do the dance. Lol.
So there I was, the totally conspicuous tall, blonde, white foreigner in normal clothes following a parade of dancers, trying to mimic them. Marisa on the other hand is Japanese American, so she looks Japanese, and doesn't standout as much. But I don't know what would be worse, being totally noticable as a foreigner and making a fool out of yourself, or looking Japanese but still making a fool out of yourself while everyone wonders what's wrong with you (like you should know what's going on). Lol.
Either way, all the people on the streets there to watch the biggest festival Kochi has with people from all Japan coming, were staring. And that's not the whole of it. Throughout the streets there were camera crews filming for live TV all around with the camera men weaving through the dancers getting up close footage of faces and such. They started walking backwards right in front of me filming me as I was trying to dance. And then because they were right in my face, I couldn't watch the person in front of me and would have no idea what I was supposed to be doing. So I was broadcast to who knows where all over Japan, and for sure to my town, lol.
But anyway, even though it was midday, with the sun beating down on us and the humidity at a high from the recent rain, and the sweat was constantly dripping down our faces, it was really fun. So we kept it up and joined in and did all of the six streets that were anywhere between 150 meters to a kilometer in length. We were going to stop at one point, because Marisa's shoe broke, but then the old lady helping us dance in the back, Yayoi-san, up and bought her another pair of shoes from a stand real quick so she could keep dancing. Throughout the streets, along with the cameramen weaving through the dancers were officials that went through and gave medals to the good dancers. I actually got a medal on two of the streets. Everyone in the group kept saying "sugoi! sugoi!" "jouzu" and stuff meaning amazing! great! skillful! etc. but I'm pretty sure it was given more along the lines of me being a foreigner participating or feeling sorry for me rather than for actually dancing well, lol. That night, at 11pm when I finally got home, I was pretty disgusting and sticky from sweat and dirt, but it was still awesome. So I danced through the streets of Kochi all day and won two medals for it. Who would've thought.