Washington, D.C. is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom festival this year. Part of the festivities include the street festival celebrating Japanese American history and tradition; titled the Sakura Matsuri festival.
The crowd featured everything you could think of. There were people dressed as traditional Samurai, made up in kimonos, etc. Then, there were the anime folks who descended on the festival dressed as everything from Sailor Moon girls to creatures from Pokemon and even the Mario Bros. There was an area for Kirin beer drinkers, and a sake tasting booth, DJ’s and dance crews and live bands performing Ryukyu songs. Sony was there. Unicef presented a project where they gave children who survived the tsunami cameras to report on the event as journalists. The food featured everything from McDonald’s to chicken fried rice. Even NASCAR driver Akinori Ogata was on hand.
Of course, there were Bonzai trees, Haiku poetry, plenty of music including a great Taiko drum exhibition, and some really cool street performers called OrientaRhythm.
One highlight was the Martial Arts stage, which featured exhibitions and demos from many different arts. Local Aikido and Kendo schools showed their arts, but the show stealers were the Ninjas from Iga City, Japan.
Check out some of the ninja demo below, and hit YouTube for the rest:
All the best,
nK