Bon Odori

There is a summer holiday in Japan called Obon. It is a Buddhist holiday but today Japanese people take time off work and travel to their hometown to visit their families. This holiday culminates with a party, usually in a central town park, where people dress in yukata (like a lighter version of kimono) and dance a traditional dance called bon odori. Here is a link to more information about the holiday.

I happened to be in field work at Akkeshi (a fishing town in northern Hokkaido) during this event this summer. A group from a lab that we are collaborating with kindly invited me to join them for the celebration.

We went to a woman’s home who owns the local yukata shop. She has a beautiful traditional Japanese home with many outstanding pieces of art work and seemed more than happy to have us there dressing up.

Traditional Japanese home.

She pulled out piles of yukata and dressed us all up. I wore a purple and white yukata that has a traditional arrow pattern on it. I think that the other ladies that I was there with got as much of a kick out of seeing me in yukata as I did wearing it.
My yukata.


A Thai student and I in Yukata (the fire box beside us is over 100 years old and still used).

We walked over to the festival where the dancing had just begun. I didn’t know it at the time, but the ladies had planned to participate in the dancing – and swept me up with them. We registered for the dance, pinned numbers to our yukata and started dancing around in a circle following the rest of the crowd. I had no idea that the dancing would continue for 1 whole hour. Shortly after we started the dance, the announcer on the loudspeaker made an announcement. I didn’t understand much, but I did hear Canada-jin (Japanese for Canadian). The woman behind me laughed and told me that he was announcing to the whole crowd that this year’s festival was “international” and we had a Canadian and Thai in the dance. As the only white person for blocks around, it wasn’t hard for anyone to figure out who was the Canadian. Through the dance strangers kept following me and taking pictures, I guess I can’t blame them; I take photos of all kinds of silly things too.

A little bored of the repeated steps and hungry and thirsty (I thought I would be having dinner there, not dancing), I was glad to have them call a finish to the ceremony. Another surprise to me was that the dancing was a competition. Each “contestant” who wore a number was judged and a prize assigned to that person. Yup, you guessed it. Despite my atrocious dancing and repeated missteps as I got distracted smiling and waving at stunned children, I won one of the top prizes. I got a 10 kg bag of rice, a towel and some tissues. I am due to leave Japan in March and I am pretty sure that no matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to eat all of that rice in that time!

After the dancing we returned our yukata then sat down for a bite and a beer in the izakaya (drinking pub) attached to the house beloning to the woman who dressed us up. They told me she is 76 years old – still running a clothing shop and pouring sake at her pub in the evenings. Amazing.
Our yukata sensei in her pub.