Dream Yosakoi Festival
The annual Dream Yosakoi Festival was held from October 31 to November 1, 2009 at various locations in Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan.
Over 4,000 dancers performed in this traditional team dance with teams as large as 100.
This style of choreographed dance is highly energetic, combining traditional Japanese dance movements with modern music.
It was quite a windy day, so the large team flags were flying in full flutter, providing an excellent backdrop to the team’s colorful costumes.
One of the defining aspects of yosakoi dance is the use of naruko, which are small wooden clappers that are held in the hands of each dancer.
Finally, below are a few videos to give you a sense of energy in this type of Japanese folk dance (sorry that the sound is awful, as it was a very windy day as you can tell).
Earlier this summer, I also attended the Super Yosakoi and the Fukuro Matsuri featuring the same type of dance.
Konnichiwa 
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Very interesting. There are really many kinds of dance and costume. 🙂
Thanks for commenting. This was one of my favorite festivals and as you can see, I took a lot of pictures and videos during the event.
Fantastic! I was looking up some yosakoi info for a blog post, and even though I was in Odaiba in October 2009, I must have just missed this! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. I love yosakoi (I have a number of posts in my blog).
Anyway, I checked out your blog and will follow it as well.
I checked your blog out as well and noticed you live in Toronto too! Did you know that we have a yosakoi group here called Sakuramai? I’m not sure if you’re interested in dancing or just watching, but I’d be happy to give you the details if you’d like to check it out sometime. 🙂
No, I didn’t know about the group – sure, please send me the details.
We are often in JCCC as my wife is part of a Japanese dance group, while my son is part of the JCCC Kendo club.
The 2012 Natsu Matsuri and Obon Festival will be held on Saturday, July 14 from 3-10 pm. We will be there (my wife will be dancing), hope you can also attend.
Thanks for the tip; I had heard about the Matsuri and was hoping to go!
The yosakoi performance is part of the Japanese Canadian Community Picnic being held in Caledon on Canada Day. You may have seen ads for it around the JCCC. 🙂 Caledon is a bit of a distance away, but apparently the picnic has been held there pretty much forever!
No idea why it isn’t on the JCCC’s website calendar this year, but here are the basic details as they’ve been before: http://www.jccc.on.ca/calendar/view_entry.php?id=193&date=20080701