Day 14: Japanese Cultural Night!

I was walking back from class when several Japanese-themed displays in UTown caught my eye. Now, I've noticed them selling things before, but now they had some actual cultural stuff. So I decided to participate in some of the activities they were holding. I bought a Japanese fortune, and to my surprise it said dai-kichi, or "great blessing". That apparently means really good luck, but I have my doubts because I'm notoriously unlucky. I don't put too much stock into fortunes, though; I just find them fun.

The real kicker, though, was I found that there would be a Japanese Cultural Night back at the university. I attended it and brought my camera along so I could film the whole thing. I had to break it up into chunks because the account I use to upload these videos has a 15 minute cap, but oh, well. Be warned that there is a lot of cheesiness, music, and audience commentary.

The instrument used in the following two videos is called the koto, a traditional Japanese string instrument. The KotoKottoN Ensemble, which performs in these videos, use the standard thirteen-string and the seventeen-string bass koto in their performs. Their name comes from the koto and kotton, the Japanese onomantopoeic expression for "moving along". I found most of this info in the playbook.

The next part of the performance is a Japanese rendition of Silent Night, or at the very least Japanese lyrics sung to the tune of Silent Night. I was really impressed.

Next, the NUS Nihon Buyo Club performed performed some traditional Japanese dance moves. I thought the music was a little odd, but it was still fun to watch.

There's a couple more songs in this next part. The first is mournful, while the second sounds like J-Pop.

And here's the ending and the final curtain call!