Friday 24 July 2009

Japanese Art Festival in Richmond

On 11th and 12th of June I drove up to England for the Japanese Art Festival in Richmond ,

Busy parking my motorbike in front, saw Hong (see MCM Expo) pull up and unload boxes from a car. Turns out she would be running a stand offering manga, obi and kanzashi.
Hong is a total sweety : she let me stash my gear behind her stand.Not wearing the vest keeps me from turning into a total sweaty ;) Thanks, Hong!

A bit later Chantal and Isla turned up and started helping out ,before they went to get changed into kimonos.
The stand : Chantal taking stock, Hong tying a thingy around her obi and Isla praying ?!
The goodies : beautifully handmade kanzashi.

More beautiful kanzashi.
The nice lady with the Chibi stand.
The stand of Japan Centre (left) and the people from JP books (middle) , where I bought a few books. "Learn japanese for busy people" . I asked for " Learn Japanese for people with absolutely no spare time" , but it is not out yet.

I didn't go for their suggestion to buy 'How to speak Japanese with Osaka dialect' . I'll try to learn the standard first.
The hallway leading to the Main hall aka the QCH , rushing towards us is Akemi Solloway ,the lady who is the main organizer for the event and in the back you can see the stand of Karen and Nanniiebim , where I bought a few nice manga ( every manga she had basically :). Nanniebim is the one standing behind the table with the red and yellow books.
In the Queen Charlotte Hall , I saw plenty of nice performances, like these awesome Taiko drummers.

Back at the stand , business was a bit slow , so they're having fun with their fans.

Keep checking this blog, I'll be back with more pics.

4 comments:

kirin said...

Just a simple question, but Japanese festival sometimes takes place in Europe, which means any other festivals such as China festival, Egypt festival, or whatever country festival also take place as often as Japanese one?

Priscilla said...

Woww the pics look great!! :D Thanks so much for sharing! I'd heard about it from Hong, but I wondered if anyone had taken photos XD It's really nice to see that you guys are doing well :)

Walter said...

Kirin, I have no idea. I've tried to research it a bit , but no conclusion possible.
On the whole I've seen or read about other festivals ( Latin American, Middle east) where the emphasis is less on cultural information and more on music and food.
This Japan art festival has a more complete offering of culture than any of the ones I've seen or read about.

Walter said...

Priscilla, Hi! I'll post more pictures in a next post.