Post Tagged with "Okinawa"

An Okinawan Wedding

Okinawa is a chain of islands forming Japan’s southernmost Prefecture. The islands were once an independent nation known as the Ryukyu Kingdom. Some traditions and cultural events seen in Okinawa would seem foreign, even to other citizens of Japan. The Okinawan Wedding is one of them.

This Photo Essay shows some of the events that take place during the typical Ryukyu Wedding. Not shown are the 300-500 guests filling the Wedding Hall. They are seated at tables drinking and dining.

The Typical Ryukyu Wedding

Imagine a formal marriage ceremony, in any western country, being conducted at the wedding reception. Then, add a dinner theater with floor shows, dancers and live bands and keep it lively for a few hours.

The performers, on stage, have rehearsed for months. They are all friends, family, classmates, neighbors or coworkers of the bride and groom. They are good. They could be part of a Las Vegas production.

Each photo in this essay includes the time it was taken. This should give you a sense of timing and what takes place, as the bride and groom go through more than a few changes of attire during the conduct of an Okinawan Wedding Ceremony.

Okinawan Wedding Attire

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Best of of 2010: a world tour in twenty-three posts

We’d like to say goodbye to 2010 wıth a world tour of favourite posts from each of our contributors. Here they are, in the order in which each one celebrates midnight. Happy New Year!

Marie (New Zealand): The New Zealand Dairy

“Where would Kiwis be without the local dairy? Certainly situations such as running out of the milk needed for the perfect cup of tea or not having enough snacks to share while watching a film on TV could get quite hairy.”

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Picture Postcards: Shopfront in Naha, Okinawa, Japan

This week’s house photo comes to us from Michael Lynch in Okinawa.

It is a Yachimun (Okinawan word for pottery) shop in Naha, Okinawa. This type of shop is family run and often the family live out the back. In Michael’s words, it’s the sort of place “where ya walk in and shout “Gomenkudasai” [Excuse me, please!] and Granny, or somebody stops watching TV, sleeping, babysitting or whatever they were doing in the back of the house and comes out to wait on you”.

See more Picture Postcards
Houses in Switzerland
Dragonboat Races in Okinawa
Diwali Celebrations in India

Festivals from around the world

This month, we asked our contributors from around the world about festivals in their countries. Read on for festivals from Okinawa, Nigeria, Spain, England, USA and Argentina.

Okinawa (Japan)

By Mike Lynch, regional contributor for Japan (Okinawa)

The Island of Okinawa has too many festivals to cover in one article so I’ll list three that occur in Naha, the capitol city, which is also nearby an International Airport and convenient public transportation.

The Naha Festival
A three day event which takes place around the 10th of October each year, the main attraction is the Naha Great Tug-O-War. This event has its roots in celebration of the end of Summer and the hope for a plentiful harvest in the next season. Many villages throughout the Ryukyu (Okinawa) Island Chain celebrate with tug-o-wars but, Naha has the largest. It is a Guinness World Record rope that weighs over 40 tons and as many as 200,000 people may attend the event with 15,000 or more joining in on the tug.

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Dragonboat Races in Okinawa

Picture Postcards has been moved to Mondays to help brighten up that back to work feeling.

Golden Week, in late spring in Japan, is a time of celebration, relaxation and dragonboat races. Michael Lynch has contributed this eye-catching photo of one of the largest dragonboats used in the Okinawa races.

Do you have photos to share? Add them to our Picture Postcards of the World photo group, and we’ll pick our favourites to feature on PocketCultures. November’s theme is festivals.

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An Eisa Festival: Photo Essay

Eisa is a dance unique to Okinawa Prefecture. Similar, in some ways, to the dances performed during Obon (An ancestor worship event in mainland Japan), Eisa may be seen anytime, year-round in Okinawa.

The photos below were taken on August 14, 2010 at an Eisa Matsuri (Festival) in Kin Village, my hometown. This time of year there’s a Festival going on somewhere every weekend and I attend as many as possible, sometimes two or three a day.

Traditionally all the performers had to be single men and women between the ages of 20 and 29. Over the past few years it has been difficult to find enough dancers to fill the Eisa Groups so, today many of the participants are married and in their thirties.

For now, I’ll let the photos and captions tell the story and introduce you to some of the characters.

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