On Friday, one of my students told me that there was some kind of art event being set up near her apartment that was going to span several blocks. That afternoon, I went to the City Hall to see if I could get a map for the art installation locations, but all they had was a flier for the music portion. However, one of my other students spotted me there, and offered to go with me to try to get more information somewhere. Most of the art and some of the music was to be created by high school students. MBC Corp., which owns a construction company and a radio and TV broadcasting station, also apparently runs their own school. So, some of the events were being sponsored by, and recorded by, MBC TV.
One art piece was hanging in nearby Central Park. It's 3 large sheets that look like batik soaked in coffee. The images didn't show up well in the photos.
Then there were the origami balls at the south end of the park.
I counted 4 stages total. This one between Central Park and Terukini Shrine. One in the park beside the shrine, one in front of the Kagoshima Art Museum, and one more next to the Marchen Children's museum.
The text on the stage backdrop says "Fall Hometown Festival." This stage was mostly used to present traditional folkmusic and activities. There wasn't really anything going on at this point, since the Sound and Light Road event was only on Saturday, and most of the music and light shows would go from 5 PM to 8 PM.
The Furosato stage did have stuff starting at 11:30 AM, Saturday, but I needed to do milk shopping for the week, and get ready before heading out to teach lessons from 2 PM to 8 PM. I made a point of getting out the door at 1 PM. When I got to the Furosato stage, the Jigenryu martial arts school was putting on a demo. Jigenryu has over a 200-year history, and was the sword art Saigo Takamori studied. Originally, the idea was to practice by using a large piece of wood to smash up a larger wood pole. In practice, you arc the sword up and down over your head while approaching your opponent with short quick steps, and screaming your lungs out. There's no concept of defense, or blocking an opponent's attack. You just aim forward and hack up everything in your way. Now, they just use a pole to smash up other sticks.
In the park next to the shrine, school kids were in the process of preparing their artworks. Some of which still weren't finished by 6 PM, when it was starting to get dark.
Eventually, I think this becomes Sakurajima.
I'm pretty sure this is volcanic ash from Sakurajima. When I came back during my break at 5 PM, the ash was gone, probably put in the paper bags holding candles, as ballast.
Preparing colored paper bags for candles.
As mentioned above, I had a break in lessons between 5 and 6 PM. The stage in front of the art museum was to have a wide variety of music, plus 5-minute light and music show at 7 PM. Here, we have a university band playing music from Africa. I recorded part of that (below).
A lot of the school student art was set up nearby.
In keeping with the "Light" part of the event name, all of the umbrella installations here have lights underneath.
The smaller pieces in cages have the symbol representing the Satsuma domain painted on them.
As part of the "Road" portion of the name, there were at least 100 paper lanterns set up along the street. Students, volunteers, and building owners were already lighting the candles at 5:15 PM. I was concerned there might be a fire hazzard, but maybe the lanterns were fire resistant.
Disney character styles are still very popular in Japan.
Back at the shrine park, the rope and wood frame is looking more like a volcano.
The paper bags, presumably with ash and candles, are starting to look like something.
This might be an interesting light maze, after the sun goes down.
The MBC stage was 20-30 meters from the paper bag installation, and largely featured professonal musicians playing koto, drums and guitar. I had time to record two songs. There weren't that many people watching, but they were sitting in folding chairs and that took up a lot of room, making it hard for me to move around and get good photos.
I then returned to the Furosato stage, where some group was rehearsing some kind of rice pounding dance or something. Unfortunately, the director was an idiot and kept making decisions that prolonged the rehearsal phase. I had to give up and return to the school before the 6 PM lesson start. I would have liked to have watched more of the music and dances. Maybe next year.
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