Monday, August 27, 2007

東京国際和太鼓コンテスト&池袋防災官

Tokyo International Wadaiko Contest and Ikebukuro Bousaikan!
Sunday was the taiko competition. It was held at Kodomo no Shiro (Children's Castle) in the theatre. It really was an all day event. We left Kameido at 9:45 AM and got back at the same time PM. I was able to see Ayano, who was nice enough to reserve tickets for me and Tom. Asano was selling stuff outside of the theatre, but I didn't buy anything. The competition was great. There were two categories, odaiko and kumidaiko (big drum and group drumming). There was a standard song for each category that all contestants had to play before playing their free piece. I really agree with who won. The winners of the kumidaiko section were really cool to watch. They had these very sharp diagonal movements that looked good. (Though I must say, I like TAIKOPROJECT better than all the groups there.) I don't know how to read the kanji for the group names correctly, so I can't really say what their name is, but they definitely deserved the $10,000 prize money the most. Both first and second place for the odaiko section were great to me, so I didn't have a preference. There was, notably, a ten year old in one of the kumidaiko groups who wasn't genius, but could definitely keep up (and show me up any day). According to the program, he already has 8 years of experience. Talk about crazy. Unfortunately, I only got a picture of the sign outside and the stage during intermission...I thought I was being considerate by taking pictures with the house lights up when no one was onstage, but they still told me I had to put my camera away. Boo.


Today I didn't have regular class. Instead, half of our language school went to the Ikebukuro Bousaikan (Disaster Prevention Building). Sounds boring right? But, it was actually pretty fun. We don't do any sort of disaster training in the U.S. except for a few fire drills, but this building is entirely about what to do in case of fires, earthquakes, and or any other disaster. We started out by watching one of those dumb videos about what to do during a fire. Then we took turns in groups of six going through a simulation room. (Everyone else watched what they did on a camera.) It was a room full of smoke and we had to find our way to the other end. There were a lot of doors, and a buzzer went off whenever someone wasn't ducking low enough away from the smoke. If you didn't close the doors behind you, the smoke got worse, and in some cases, the lady turned off the lights to make it more difficult. After that, we talked about what to do during an earthquake (which happen quite frequently in Japan). Afterwards, we took turns in groups of five in a simulation room. It was a room with a table, five chairs, a burner, and a pot. We'd sit at the table and once the 'earthquake' started, we had to crawl under the table, and one person could attempt to turn off the burner and move the pan. It was interesting since, again, we could watch each group on a screen. I was surprised how much the simulation room shook. A few people actually screamed. The 'earthquakes' are based on actual big earthquakes there have been, like Kobe and Tokyo. Next, we learned how to use a fire extinguisher and went into groups to put out a simulation fire. (I realized while I was doing it that I'd never used a fire extinguisher before...I came all the way to Japan to learn that?) And lastly, we watched a lame 3D video of people in an earthquake. So anti-climactic, but still way better than class. =)