Saturday, May 4, 2019

May Day and Fuudo Pia


May Day


On Monday, it rained. Up at Amu Plaza, we had a May Day event, which was basically labor union leaders extolling the benefits of union membership, and reminding everyone of how important workers are to a worker-based economy.



There weren't that many people (less than 100), but with all the umbrellas up, it was impossible to see the stage.



Although, there didn't seem to be anything going on other than a few speakers trying to rally everyone, so I didn't stick around.


Fuudo Pia


Nearby, Amu Plaza was hosting "Fuudo Pia", which essentially translated to "traditional event," the idea being to promote local produce and products again (lettuce, daikon, shochu, tea). Notice the Southern Cross girls in costume just inside the gate.



There was a live stage, but most of the events were promotions and rock-scissors-paper games for prize giveaways. Kodai did play on Monday for about 15 minutes. In the past, he's been the main MC for these kinds of things, but the promoters went with a non-performing female this time. I guess the decision was over how much time the MC spent interacting with the audience, compared to interacting with the merchants and promoter. In any case, Kodai just did medleys of songs from the Amami islands.



Most of the people here didn't care. They just wanted a place to sit, talk, or stare at their smartphones.



Later, Guri-bu went on stage to play rock-scissors-paper against the children and really old people.



Tuesday was more of the same, with the addition of a "sports talk" event with members of the Rebnise basketball team. When the players introduced themselves, they made a point of saying how tall each of them are. The audience was duly impressed.



The team knows where their money comes from - they had to drag the advertising board for a "Rebnise shochu" bottle on stage with them to pose with.



And that's all for another dreary day in paradise.

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