Asian Kagoshima is a cultural exchange event between the city of Kagoshima and high schools in countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and China. Most of the singing and dancing by the students is in Houzan Hall, across the street from Central Park, on Saturday. I had to work all Saturday, so I missed that part, which is a shame, because some of the performances, judging from past years, are really good. The event continued to Sunday, with everything being outside in the park, including food and activities booths, and another event stage. There was also a satellite stage nearby in front of 7-11 in Tenmonkan.
I was able to get out of the apartment at 1 PM on Sunday, and the weather was beautiful. Lots of tourists this time, too, because another of the big cruise liners had docked at Dolphin Port. Austrian tourists this time. As I was walking between Central Park and Tenmonkan, I heard an older white guy, and his wife, trying to ask for directions from a traffic guard for the way back to Dolphin Port. The directions were only half-right, so I volunteered to get the couple to Streetcar Street, and from there they were able to get to the Port on their own. We talked on the way, and that was relaxing.
Otherwise, the food booths were crazy, and mostly run by the local Tenmonkan restaurants, so it was food that I could get at anytime. The activities booths were the same as from previous years, with various traditional music instruments you could play around with, games, and tables for practicing caligraphy.
I wanted to get some Vietnamese coffee, which I really like, but the one Vietnamese food booth had a line 40 people long. And, a couple hours later, when the line had subsided, no one was working the register anymore. So, I had to give up on that. A shame, because the coffee was only 50 yen...
The main outdoor stage was a mixed bag. The fest had a dance contest running in between the other performances, and that was just high school girls trying to do pop idol dances, followed by 15 minutes of feedback from the judges. When that happened, I'd go to the Tenmonkan stage and wait for whatever was going on there. Unfortunately, Tenmonkan only had 10-minute performances from the Asian groups every 30-40 minutes. Leaving me a lot of time to wander around, or read manga (Q.E.D. iff and C.M.B. had both just come out the day before.)
In Tenmonkan, there was a dance group from Myanmar. I recorded that (below).
More Japanese high school girls singing copyrighted pop songs. Singapore and China both had very good classical performances (the Singapore group did one Japanese song from the Meiji era, and I think the last one was the theme song for the current NHK Saigodon TV show). The Chinese violin quartet did Mozart. There was another classical performance by school kids from South Korea, and the last thing I recorded was a Thai dance group. Everything was scheduled to end at 4 PM, and it was getting close to 3:45, so I packed up the camera and headed up to Amu Plaza to see what I'd missed there.
Overall, a fairly active weekend.
There is one more thing to mention, I guess. After checking out the last few minutes of the KKB TV event at Amu Plaza (which was just wrapping up as I got there), I decided to go to Seattle's Best Coffee shop in the main train station to get something to eat and read more of C.M.B. Somewhere around 5:30, I headed back to the apartment. As I was crossing a major intersection a couple blocks from home, I saw a vision impaired guy heading in my direction. I've seen him many times before, and I knew that he lived in an apartment complex in the area, but we'd never talked. Our street doesn't have a sidewalk, so we have to walk on the shoulder of our street in order to get anywhere. As I was watching, this guy was walking forward, and had missed turning where the main street sidewalk is, and had wandered into the left-hand lane of the main street. The traffic light at the big intersection one block farther down had turned to green, so some of the cars in the cross traffic were making the turn to head our way. Pretty soon, this guy was going to be right in the middle of oncoming cars. There were no other pedestrians in the area, and the employees at the bike repair shop on the corner (who are normally outside doing repairs) were uncharacteristically indoors. That left it to me to try to explain in broken Japanese, to someone that had no idea what was going on, that he was in the middle of traffic, and that he needed to turn around and get back to the main sidewalk (which has a raised strip in the middle specifically for use by the vision impaired). It took him a minute to believe me when I told him I had him facing in the right direction for getting to Streetcar Street. But after that, he seemed to be fine again, (after relocating the raised sidewalk strip). I'd like to hope that the drivers approaching him would slow down and stop to let him cross the street safely, but that's not really much of a guarantee.
Direct youtube video 1 link
Direct youtube video 2 link
Direct youtube video 3 link
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