Post pilgrimage 2. Awaodori and arrival to Osaka

On Monday Tokushima trip was finally done. Except for one little thing to do. I wanted to see the Awaodori once more! I had seen it on 2015 during the actual festival but on Awaodori hall they have performances going on even now 3 times a day so after leaving heavier stuff to coin locker(since I had to check out of hotel before dance performance would begin) I headed for the venue.

Heh. Even rest spot next to the venue is themed along with awaodori. That's the shape of the hat women wear.

With ticket bought I browsed the store but didn't find anything I really felt like buying. Amused me to find awaodori hall also had all the stuff needed for Shikoku pilgrimage.

Crowd wasn't that large(couple older ladies plus me) which wasn't too surprising for Monday. Work after all :) The host had even put english text projected to the wall maybe on account of foreigner being there(nice touch for those foreign visitors who can't read japanese). That or it's standard just in case. Text had Awaodori history which I had read on japanese pamphlet while waiting for the start time :) Before performance I even had some time to chat with other visitors.

Performance itself was not what I expected. I thought it would be just the dance show. Started with it all right but after that we were told about history of the awaodori. Another surprising touch was that I was actually directly addressed by the member of group that did the speaking after he noted about english text and one of the women I had talked to noted I'm okay with Japanese. Just friendly greeting and asking where I was from(surprise surprise...Not!).

Awaodori was originally started in 17th century. Common idea is that it was from celebration of Awa castle completition when drunk people went outside dancing but seems it's far more likely it evolved from old Obon dance to appease souls of deceased ancestors. We were then shown 3 different version of Awaodori. First from 400 years ago when dance was rather subdued, slow tempoed, arm movement was done far lower than current and dance moved around in circles. VERY different from current Awaodori.

Next we got to see Awaodori that resurfaced after 2nd world war after brief hiatus during war time. This time tempo had gone up and it was more freeform but hands were still fairly low and dance was still going around mostly in large circle. Current form started to take form but still bit different.

Current one comes from '70's when dance was redesigned to be more showy resulting in even faster tempo and arms going up(especially for women dancers) and dance moving in direct line to make it suit parade style performance better.

Men dancing. Quite dynamic and fast.

Women meanwhile are moving along more slowly and gracefully.

But this was not all! Then was the part I had dreaded since I had heard the soul freezing word "taiken" at the preliminary speech. Personal experience. We were to experience the bloody dance ourselves!

Now anybody who knows me knows I HATE HATE HATE dancing. At school I flat out refused dancing. Here I thought about bolting through door and to hell with the ~7 euros I had paid. I even tried to refuse but was practically dragged to the floor so short of REALLY making fuss about it wouldn't be able to slither out of this! And I hate lying so even trying to appeal on my painful ankle wasn't option since the bloody ankle had decided to heal itself already! Noooooooo!

Well at least nobody I knew was watching and I just hoped there's no automatic video taken that is then sold for interested(I wouldn't be able to refuse that anyway...) so just bit my teeth and tried to follow along. Well at least on the flip side I had beautiful young(think youngest female performer) lady with the beautiful traditional dress as an instructor so there was that as the silver lining.

But was it over with that? NOOOO! During dance 3(of about 6 or so) of the viewers were selected by putting up flower wreath much like in hawaii and while rest returned to their chairs we 3 were pulled to the center(gee. I HATE being on center stage!) and given cloth tied to your head and talked to. I was asked if this was first time seeing Awaodori(nope. Second. Fact that seemed to please him) and what I was doing in Japan now(walked part of Shikoku Pilgrimage. Fact that stirred quite a bit of oohhing and aahhing).

And then? We STILL were not off the loop. While rest had been able to just walk to chair we 3 had to DANCE our way there...ARGH! One last torture...

Then the group showed their dance one more time and then it was over. Well except one of the other guests dragged me to one of the lady dancers that was still there(actually my instructor) and asked her if it would be okay to take photo of me and her to which she graciously agreed.

All in all this experience turned out to be quite different from what I had expected. Scary! Felt so embarrassed! Thank god it was over! Okay fun memory despite all but boy it was tough to go through.

After this I headed back to station and from there toward Osaka. Osaka is city I have visited twice but for various reasons(mostly by me screwing up) never have done any serious exploration of the city or it's spots. Best was seeing Osaka castle from the outside.

Arriving to the Osaka it had started to rain once more which was...not pleasant. And I found out Osaka station is not that easy to get around. Well station is easy but getting out from there took me a while to figure out walker path toward where I wanted to go. There were even places where walkers couldn't go through(car only) so I had to detour bit off which on the rain was less than pleasant. Later I found out there's underground section with stores etc you can use but of course for newcomer like me that wasn't easy to navigate so I ended up couple times coming off in wrong spot anyway.

I dropped my luggage to the hotel and with time still more or less headed back to the Osaka station. There was aquaria I had been planning to visit last time in Osaka so now was the time. Never been one and this seems to be one of the biggest in the World so was looking forward of snapping some good photos!

One day I have got to take a ride in one of those.

Getting there was easy enough but wet. Damn rain! I noticed they say it takes about 1.5h to go through all and I had...1.5h left before it closes! Well I generally go through these kind of things faster than average so wasn't too worried.

Now I had been anticipating getting good photos of fish of all kinds but what I DIDN'T account was that it was fairly dark in the building so shutter speeds went so slow it caused high blur and forced me to go for high ISO making extra noise to photos. And automatic focus was unreliable at best while manual focus was fairly hard as well. So most of my photos turned out to be less than optimal...

Right off the bat walking through this tunnel with fish all over us. Yey!

What a lonely sad looking bird(?).

Not sure what this is but quite loud and active fellow.

Blue light beautiful but did make it hard to get good photos. Better than darkness though!

What is THAT?

Big one either way. Some sort of whale?

Haha these two were so silly looking :D They just kept floating like that next to the glass window not making even an itch.

Weird worm like things poking from sand.

This swimmer was nightmare to take photo. Fast as hell which made clear photo nearly impossible. This was best shot of quite a few attempt.

Looks so pittiable for some reason :D

At the very end there was place where one could actually touch fish(some sort of big thing with actually poisonous tail which I kept my hand far from and small variety of a shark. Both type were rather docile though. Big thingie was rather slippery while shark felt more like velvet).

Petting fish. Haha. Not what I expected :)

Got couple toy fish for my nieces and headed toward the station in rain thinking where to eat. Had spotted several restaurants close to hotel so figured somewhere there but then spotted an indian restaurant. I love indian so ducked in right away. Alas even the extra hot wasn't THAT hot but still good. Just would have wanted to feel my mouth BURN!