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| a red umbrella in the park - best picture I took all day |
Houston is a twin city of Chiba, Japan. This is why Hermann park has a beautiful Japanese garden, and every year there is the Japan Festival. The festival was last weekend.
You could be forgiven for thinking you were at an off-season Halloween party, as many people took the opportunity to dress up. There were a lot of anime characters, some people in harajuku style, (predominantly “sweet Lolita”), Nintendo characters like Mario Brothers, and a lot of riffs on the traditional Japanese kimono. My only comment is that there should be a cut-off point for dressing like Pikachu. You CAN be too old for some things.
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| yo-yo fishing |
The best part, (aside from the people watching) was the demonstrations. You could attend a tea ceremony demo in the Japanese garden, watch tae kwon do demonstrations, ikebana, taiko drumming, and so on. Any down time was filled with Japanese pop music.
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| It wouldn't be a festival without food, would it? |
And of course there was shopping for all sorts of useless trinkets. If you wanted a plastic samurai sword, this was the place to be.
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| Hello Kitty, of course. Is there anything she isn't on? |
I love Spring in Houston, there's always something going on.
I attended this festival once, a number of years ago, and it was one of the best such cultural festivals I've attended. I was in Baltimore this weekend, or I would have joined you! My friend Tim went as well (and he was one of the ones who dressed up). Though I wouldn't have known it was happening otherwise--they need to do a better job of getting out the word on it.
ReplyDeleteAs always, GORGEOUS pictures. The one of the entire family in kimono really sparks my imagination. Love it.