Reexamininig our stereotypes

Coming to Japan we knew very little about the people, the culture or the history. We now know what a broad swath over-view we had of such a vast and complex culture, country and people.

One of the things we often heard about 'the Japanese' before coming here was how hard they were to read because their body language was so controlled. We also heard that they were hard to get to know though always polite and that they did not express their emotions much outwardly.

Our time here keeps proving these stereotypes to be just that... stereotypes.

Check out some of these videos and photos taken at one of the great festivals that happens in our neighbourhood at this time of year. It is called the Koenji Awadori and if you click here you can see some of the background to this. 10000 dances... a million spectators!

Once again we were struck but what a fun event this was with none of the anti-social behaviour shown in many of our cities with such huge gathering.

We arrived early to get a spot on the street and immediately the people next to us offered us part of their tarp to sit on and offered us a beer (liquor can be freely drunk here in public and can be bought in vending machines; you will see public drunkenness but everything we have seen is always being 'happy drunk'). We chatted with everyone around us in our broken Japanese. Everybody was up-beat, excited and very chatty.

A massive drumroll announced the beginning of 10,000 dances coming by us in wave. Skim these photos to check out how proud, how alive and happy the dancers look.

As the event wore on, we got a real kick out of looking up at the bars and restaurants on the second floors full of people totally enjoying the event. Check out the guys hanging out of the windows. This is totally not the kind of ebullient, open and loud enthusiasm we expected here. 

This was another great (and a little overwhelming)  day in this amazing city of Tokyo!