After weeks of pretty much nothing really happening on the weekends, things got crazy on the 27th and 28th. We had KYT TV doing their promo of their new TV shows in Central Park, the open space in front of Lotteria, and at little quiz rally spots around Tenmonkan. Tenmonkan had the Wan Wan Festa (dog fair) both days, there was Dai Hanya at Dolphin Port and various other venues around the city, NHK (next door to Dolphin Port) had their open house and advertising for their new shows, and Amu Plaza has its Beer Festa from Saturday to this Tuesday. It was impossible to catch everything, and I didn't even try to (this time). In part, because I had to teach classes on Saturday from 4-5 PM, and again from 6-8 PM. At least, I had a late start for the day, which gave me a bit of time from 1 PM to go watch some of it. Unfortunately, what I really cared about was Dai Hanya with the yosakoi dancing, and the yosakoi didn't start until just before 5:20 PM. Sigh. (More about that later.)
I got to Central Park at a little after 1 PM (after I did my milk buying for the week. The local supermarket near my place used to sell their 1 liter packs of milk for 197 yen regularly, but at 178 yen ($1.60 USD) on Saturdays. The price recently shot up to 230 yen regularly, and 198 yen on Saturdays. Stupid inflation. My paycheck hasn't changed.) KYT had their big boards with photos from the new shows.
You can tell this is a posed photo; Japanese reporters don't run for anything.
Lots of food and souvenir tables. Food from the big restaurant chains.
Slack lines for the kids.
According to the schedule I found, most of the stage events were with the TV personalities talking to each other, foamhead character performance shows, some TV programming PR, and a bit of live music on Sunday.
TV people joking around with each other.
The woman on the left is Nora Hirano, who I'm told is a very brash comedian on KYT. Right now, she's posing for the audience.
I think this is a new mascot for Hioki City. A cat in samurai armor.
After looking around Central Park for a few minutes, I went to Tenmonkan, thinking I'd be able to see some of the Dai Hanya dancing at the satellite site in front of Starbucks. Instead, the area was taken up by Wan Wan Festa (tomorrow). I took photos there, then went to Dolphin Port, which is where the main Dai Hanya stage was scheduled to be located. After that, I went to the school to teach one class, then ran back to Dolphin Port (probably losing one of my camera batteries along the way) during my break, then back to work for two lessons.
Sunday, I returned to Central Park a little after 1 PM. A boys dance group named 10-Jin Actor (10 Person/Gods Actor) was on stage doing some standard boys idol group dancing. They seemed fairly uncoordinated, but there was a huge audience in front of the stage watching them and cheering (easily 500 people), and no one was holding up smartphones. I figured there was a no-cameras policy in effect, and didn't bother trying to sneak a couple photos before getting caught. There's nothing I can easily find on them in English, although the Japanese wiki page says that they're based in Kyushu, probably Fukuoka.
The schedule showed Fantastics From Exile Tribe later in the afternoon, which was probably also very popular (I was at Dolphin Port then, and didn't see anything else going on here for the rest of the day). As a note, Exile is a huge boy idol dance group in Japan, and they have LOTS of members, who belong to what's called Exile Tribe. Fantastics is a new 9-member sub-group. They first formed in 2016, but their official debut was Dec. 2018. Since I didn't watch them, I can't comment any further on them. All I do know is that one of my students is a big Exile fan, and that she would know more about Fantastics than I do. However, with the 10-day Golden Week holidays coming on Tuesday, I won't see her to ask until sometime later in May. I'll probably forget to ask by then, because I don't really care that much.
Anyway, this was the KYT TV stuff I saw this weekend.
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