Japanese Festival

We traveled downtown for a Japanese Street Festival, which is part of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. The Cherry Blossom Festival lasts a little more than two weeks and includes a variety of activities; the more popular ones include a kite festival, biking tours, river tours, photo safaris, fireworks, a parade, and the Japanese Street Festival. Due to this being the coldest April in about 40 years, the cherry blossoms, unfortunately, didn't stick around too long. They peaked during the first week of April, then pretty much disappeared.

The description of the Japanese Street Festival on the Cherry Blossom Festival site reads as follows: Presented by the Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C, the Sakura Matsuri is the nation’s largest one day exhibition of Japanese culture and features over 30 vendors of Japanese and Asian cuisine; a Japanese beer garden; 25 exhibits of Japanese arts and crafts; 20 vendors of Japanese and Asian products; the new “J-POP Land” highlighting Japan’s modern youthful society; martial arts demonstrations; and live performances of both traditional and popular Japanese culture.

For being the "nation's largest one day exhibition of Japanese culture," we were a bit disappointed in the show. Most of the merchandise being sold by the vendors was either more cheap pop-culture than traditional Japanese, or so heavily branded it was hard to tell where the corporations ended and the culture began (my personal favorite thing was the white plastic kimono covered in the Target logo). There was a small stage featuring traditional Japanese performances, which were fairly entertaining and drew a decent crowd. The highlight was six dances performed by actual geishas from Japan. We watched some judo students perform, and listened to a contemporary Japanese band. We ate some chicken, rice, and lomein that could have been bought at any Panda Express for half the price that we paid, and then we left. Expecting to actually see a representation of both traditional and popular Japanese culture, we ended up walking around a big promotion event for Target, Southwest, Garnier, Starbucks, and 97.1 WASH-FM. Anyway, at least we came away with some good photos, which you can see by clicking below.

Japanese Festival