We Find the Bamboo Festival

Sunday morning, September 14, 2008

Fukuoka, Japan

The Oita Bamboo Festival, held here in city center Fukuoka, absolutely captured our hearts last night. We had spent the afternoon at the Sun Palace where we saw our third performance of Blast II: MIX. Peter had the lead visual role in the afternoon performance and it was a thrill to see him dance. (Dr. Dixie Duerr would be so proud, Peter!) Ed and I were hungry after the performance and headed back to the neighborhood around our hotel to find a restaurant.

We ate early, around 5 pm, and then enjoyed coffee at a Seattle's Best Coffee place, right across from the Starbuck's that we've been frequenting. Ed says Starbucks' brew is better.

We decided to walk a bit before sunset and came upon the Oita Bamboo Festival in a large open air plaza. There were vendor booths set up around the square, tables with umbrellas and chairs in the center of the plaza, a stage with live music, flags everywhere, and all of these strange pieces of bamboo surrounding the entire plaza.

Taking a closer look, we saw tea light candles inside a hollowed out spot at the top of the bamboo sections. There were hundreds of these bamboo chunks, most about 18-30 inches tall and 3-4 inches in diameter. A tealight had been placed in the hollow and the people standing around were holding butane lighters and waiting for something.

At 6 pm there was a loudspeaker announcement and the lighting began. The tall city buildings already provided less light; sunset was about an hour away, so the glow of the candlelight became more and more golden inside the bamboo as the sun went down. It was an enchanting sight and was made more magical by the live music (well, it did sound sort of like an acoustic Irish folk band, but we enjoyed it a lot.)

There were cameras and people everywhere. The lighters were handed from person to person. Photos were snapped and there were smiles everywhere. Two young women from the staff of the Oita Prefecture Tourism Association, both English speakers, took us under their wing and explained that the Festival is a promotion to urge people to visit their area of Kyushu. Some of the bamboo chunks were arranged in the shape of the letters "O - I - T - A" and you can see some of the letters in the photos of Wanda (me) with the tourism staff. They insisted that we wear their tourism kimono jackets in these photos! What fun!

Stumbling across the Bamboo Festival was a delightful, unplanned part of our days here in Japan. Once again, we are so impressed with the friendliness and warmth of the Japanese people as we shared this beautiful evening with them.

Today's photos show the Bamboo Festival, the bamboo candle holders, the tourism staff with Ed and me, and a booth selling plums at the Festival.

NOTE: I missed posting yesterday and promised to write about Peter doing laundry and several other things. Watch for that post later today. WJ