This upcoming weekend (August 26 & 27) is the awesome Oedo Matsuri Bon Odori taikai (大江戸まつり盆おどり大会), so, if you’re around Tokyo, you should definitely check it out. (Japanese info is here). I shot the video below two years ago, if you’d like an idea of what it’s like (after the intro still shots, there’s live video):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, although the Oedo matsuri is “local” (I live in Chuo-ku), our truly local (as in neighbourhood) Bon Odori was last week, so I popped over to shoot a bit and have a few drinks while listening to the music and watching the dancers and, below, are some shots from that evening. It’s always so much fun to go to your local Bon Odori and see the same people over the years (and I’m now getting quite a collection of portraits of some of the real regulars who dance at all the local ones, including the Oedo one).

The Tokyo Jidai Matsuri is an annual parade that depicts key events in Tokyo history through the ages (jidai means “era” or “period”). It’s one of those festivals that you might think has been around for a loooong time, but, actually, it started in 1999 as part of an event called “Tokyo Renaissance”, an attempt to promote the Asakusa area and its historical significance in the history of Edo. Just so there’s no confusion, Kyoto has a more famous Jidai Matsuri that’s been running since the late 1800s and is held on October 22nd every year.

Anyway, last November, I knew the Jidai Matsuri was on, but I didn’t have any particular plan to go and watch it. However, as I was very near Asakusa by chance (I went there to buy a ticket for the Tobu line to Nikko), I strolled over and spent an hour or so watching “The Ages” pass by. I was pleasantly surprised on many fronts: the streets were nowhere near as crowded as I had anticipated (which was my original reason for not really wanting to go), everyone in the parade seemed to really be enjoying themselves, and the costumes were fantastic.

Fortunately, I had my 135L with me and it was easy to get right up to the front, so, this is what it’s all about (if you’re interested in details about the costumes in terms of period or meaning, this website has detailed descriptions). I’ll start with my own personal favourite from the whole parade:

Okay, not everyone looked happy to be there…

This guy reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac for some reason…

Okay, this guy wasn’t actually in the parade but he was pretty cute in his absolute refusal to walk one inch further…

By the way, if you are running a WordPress.org blog and you ever want to insert more than two or three images in one post, do yourself a favour and get the Faster Image Insert plugin – it’s a brilliant solution to the very irritating built-in method of inserting images one-by-one.

I haven’t been participating in Show Me Japan for the past few weeks (hectic weekends, it seems), but this is my entry for Show Me Japan Vol. I issue XV

You can read more about Show Me Japan by clicking the image below:

What have I been doing? Well, the main focus has been going to matsuri and shooting people (with a camera). Other than that, I have been doing quite a bit of reading and just enjoying my free time.

What I have also been doing is watching the Tokyo Sky Tree grow – it is, at the same time, both a fast and a slow process. I know that makes no sense, but it’s slow in the sense that it won’t officially open until 2012 and it’s fast in the sense that I occasionally look off the balcony and think: “wow, it’s really progressing in height…”.

I took this last week:

They are about half way to the second observatory, so I’d say that they are at about the 400 metre mark (with another couple of hundred metres to go and a final height of 643 m).

Well, actually, I’ve just checked the official Japanese site, where they post the official progress, and they are at 418 m! (I didn’t know they were posting a height tracker – that’s pretty cool.)

Yes, matsuri pictures coming soon…

Every summer, an aquarium is set up outside the Sony Building in Ginza and there is some kind of “theme” (this is the 43rd Sony Aquarium) . The 2010 theme is “Kuroshio” (黒潮), which is the strong Pacific current that sustains the coral reefs around Okinawa, so here’s what you can see curbside every day until August 31 (obviously, despite the title of this entry, it’s not just sharks):

White-tip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus) (ネムリブカ)

Malabar Grouper (Epinephelus malabaricus) (ヤイトハタ)

Zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum) (トラフザメ)

Moray eel (Muraenidae) (ウツボ)

Young tourist looking at the sharks (tempted to follow the pattern and put Homo sapiens here)

another angle of the same White tip reef shark

If you feel so inclined, you can also venture up to the 8th floor and catch the 3-D Sony Aquarium movie in which you can (as the Sony Aquarium website says):

Experience the dynamic Kuroshio (Japan Current), the Pacific equivalent of the Gulf Stream, on a giant 200-inch screen. See whale sharks and manta rays roam freely alongside myriad varieties of fish. Itfs so real, youfll feel like youfre swimming alongside a whale shark through the powerful currents of the Okinawan sea.

The link to the English site is here (and I’m happy to report they’ve updated it because it was horribly outdated when I did my earlier post) and the Japanese site is here. It’s worth clicking on the Japanese link for the very pleasing intro (which has some English subtitles as well).

For the technically curious, all of the above photos were taken with the silky smooth Canon 135 f/2.o L USM – a lens you will NEVER regret buying (but you will regret not having bought it sooner)!

There is definitely something quite fabulous about walking through Ginza late at night (or anytime, really), coming across a giant aquarium and then seeing the delight and wonder on people’s faces as they take a few moments out of their day to to marvel at what’s inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVo9hC5GzaA

This is part of a project from some students at 東京工業大学 (Tokyo Institute of Technology), usually referred to as Toko-Dai or Tokyo Tech, which is ranked in or near the top 20 universities in the world for technology, so it’s a very cutting-edge institution (no pun intended, LOL) and, although the VR hair cut looks frivolous, it no doubt has some real world potential down the road.

I actually recently met two graduates (one a Masters student and one a PhD candidate) from Tokyo Tech and I can honestly say they were two of the brightest, most engaged, people under the age of 30 I’ve met in recent memory (and I meet A LOT of 25 to 30 year olds from all of the top universities in Japan in my day-to-day work).

Just for fun here is a list of Tokyo Tech’s “Notable Alumni” from Wikipedia that gives you an idea of the calibre of the institution:

• Toshitada Doi – robot Aibo pioneer, co-inventor Compact Disc
• Toshio Doko – former chairman of Japan Business Federation
• Shoji Hamada – potter, Living National Treasure of Japan
• Shigeo Hirose – pioneer of robotics technology
• Toshio Ikeda – former Fujitsu executive director, pioneer of computer production
• Satoru Iwata – CEO of Nintendo
• Naoto Kan – current Prime Minister of Japan (2010-)
• Kanjiro Kawai – potter, refused Living National Treasure designation
• Akitoshi Kawazu – game producer, creator of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
• Kenichi Ohmae – business and corporate strategist
• Keisuke Serizawa – textile designer, Living Natinal Treasure of Japan
• Kazuo Shinohara – architect, former professor
• Hideki Shirakawa – Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 2000)
• Toshikazu Sunada – mathematician
• Hiroshi Takahashi – architect
• Kenjiro Takayanagi – pioneer in the development of television
• Takeshi Takei – co-inventor of ferrite magnet, former professor
• Saburo Tanaka – founder of Kinema Junpo, the oldest film magazine in Japan
• Takaaki Yoshimoto – poet, literary critic, philosopher

The understatement here on their “News & Topics” list is so great (and so Japanese):