I attended at the annual celebration of Japanese garden with my family. It was our first time to attend any kind of Japanese festival here in America. In short, I really enjoyed it. And I regret I had missed this opportunities for these past nine years.
They served Japanese traditional foods and snacks at the food stand. Nothing new. Curry and rice, rice ball, tonjiru (Japanese soup), rice cracker, and daifuku. My family enjoyed especially rice ball. I can make rice ball, but it always tastes different and special when somebody makes it for me.
We attended at the origami event. Since this year is Dog’s year in Chinese horoscope, we folded origami to a dog. It was pretty simple as Japanese, but it seemed to be confusing for non-Japanese. I always find it interesting to see how different result between my family in creating.
In the picture, the right-hand side, golden headed dog is mine. At the center, the orange headed dog is my daughter’s, and the left-hand side, the brown dog is my husband’s.
After eating lunch and entertained by origami folding, we went to the event circle. It started from the Japanese man’s singing. He was wearing kimono. I assumed he would sing shigin or something. The word shigin instantly reminded me of one Japanese comedian who sings shigin about erotic matter. I prepared myself not to laugh by remembering of the Japanese comedian. In reality however, the Japanese man didn’t sing shigin. He sang three Japanese traditional songs by himself without any musical instruments. The songs were Furusato, Aka Tombo, and Kojo no Tsuki. They are the songs of Home, Red Dragonfly, and the Moon over the ruined castle. All of these songs are familiar to Japanese.
If you are Japanese, you know all these three songs induce tears, right? Especially true for the people like me who lives far away from Japan. So, right when I heard him saying the song title of Furusato, I was about to leave the place. I knew I would cry by listening to this song. This song is about missing your hometown and your family there. I listened to his singing without leaving. And of course, I started crying at the begging and had been shedding tears all the way until he finished.
♬ Any feedback? (^^♪
three wisdom 