Reflections: London

Hyper Japan is an event that started in October 2010 , promising a mix of old, new , multimedia , food and many other things coming from Japan. It was an instant success ( 13000 visitors in 2010 ! ).

This year it was held at the Brompton Hall at Earls Court. Free parking ! (for motorbikes, heh!).
I'd arranged for the usual ferry from Calais to Dover , and sailed on the new large Ferry , the Pride of France. The car deck is huge , but there's less space for motorbikes. If there's too many , they get parked on the truckers deck. No problem for me , I was the only biker there, as well as on the return trip. Not unusual in winter.

On the trip back I took some more pictures.
The inside is really luxurious ( mirrors on the ceiling, marble coffee bar, tiled floors ) . The tax free shop wouldn't look out of place on an airport. This is just the perfume department.

The accessory department ( I didn't photograph the booze department , I had my hands full of bottles of single malt :) .

The coffee bar at the ship's stern is a huge sitting area.

Plenty of space to sit , with the picture on the wall and the beautiful interior I felt like I was sitting in a luxury hotel.

At the Hyper Japan , the man from third window films ( I have got most of their DVDs ) interviewed film director Satoshi Miki ( of "Turtles are surprisingly fast swimmers") and actress Fuse Eri. It was interesting to hear from people that direct and play in the comic movies I enjoy so much.

Fuse Eri.

Director Satoshi Miki (so that's what Japanese film directors wear these days :).

Judo world and Olympic champion Tsukada Maki was very interesting to see and hear on stage : I found it really inspiring to hear her talk so enthusiastically about her love for her sport. I'd almost start taking lessons myself.

"Please will you all give a warm welcome to my sparring partner from a local club, who is kind enough to 'assist' me in this demonstration." ( read : "whom I will be TOTALLY flooring in the next few minutes")

And boy, flooring him she did : as solid as her partner looks ,Tsukada-san throws him with deceptive ease , that can only come from lots of training. Look how her foot is( or both feet are) always planted firmly on the tatami (mat).

One more .

And again.

And another one.

When asked if it hurt , he replied : " A lot less when you get thrown by somebody with such good technique ".Sure, but the bangs as he hit the tatami were impressive.

At the end of the demonstration , a few people were invited on stage to wear a keikogi ( martial arts garb). When asked how she felt wearing it, the girl's response was "Ok, never mind that the sleeves are too long,.."

"but it's like I'm wearing pyjama's. I really feel like I'm ready to go to bed and not to go do sports in this."

This was cute : a children's learning guide for the hiragana and katakana alphabet.

No koto playing on this Hyper Japan ( damn and I love hearing the Koto ) but the Shamisen player
Ichikawa Ibiko ( currently the only professional shamisen player in the UK ) was there and this time he'd brought a few students along.

There was also a traditional folk singer there : Alika Mochida , no pictures I was too busy clapping and singing along with the Hanagasa Ondo ( really ! "Yasho Makasho" :) ).
and too far from stage to get good pictures, but you can hear and see her here with some traditional songs on YT.
Honestly , British crowds are even worse at singalongs than Belgian ones , haha ! But the folk singer was lovely and I recognized some of the songs from a CD I have :)

Hiroko Tanaka's Nihon Buyo group was performing . Alas I spent so much time at the sake tasting I missed most of the performance.

I still got pictures of the tail end of the performance.

A really long dance this was. And these people learn all this in their spare time. Colour me impressed.

Hiroko-san danced the last one, a modern dance she created herself.
Lovely kimono. If you look at the last Hyper Japan and the Matsuri, she wore a grey one :)

Doki is one of my favourite shops and they have finally started up again in a new location.

I never pass their shop without buying at least something. This time it was a small sake set and 3 donabe bowls.

No Japanese festival or fair is complete for me without learning more about Japanese food preparation.
No better person to do that than Atsuko-san , who was preparing these Japanese-French inspired tapa style snacks ( Japas ) for us in the Taste Discovery Zone.

A slice of smoked salmon, thin slice of courgette , filled with a paste of grated radish, and a wasabi flavoured sauce , which tasted like Japanese mayo ( sweet ) with wasabi added. Sprinkle a bit of olive oil over it . They taste good too !

I really liked the Taste Discovery Zone ( new this year ) a lot. It's free and you can learn a lot there.
To prepare for the Sake awards I took one of the Sake tasting "courses" led by Natsuki , who has two great posts about it here : Part 1 and Part 2.
These were the sakes I tasted : sure enough the daiginjo has a wonderful nose and after-taste compared to the others, but each has its own unique qualities , which is why I found it a bit sad that the most expensive sake won most of the Sake Taste awards.

Too bad I couldn't buy any of the sakes at the show. Many are only available through restaurants and the ones I tried to get at the shops in London the brewers told me , didn't have them. Tsk !

Of course , next to the cosplayers, there's always lolita street garb with a very high kawaii factor.

The winner of ( I forgot what category ).

Definitely the winner of the under-age category.

The contestants. Kawaii,desu ne ?

I also met some members of the Kimono de Jump UK at the HJ,

From left to right, Mike, Isla , Natalie , Hong and April. I would have been in this picture in a kimono too, if a certain member of KDJ UK hadn't forgotten to bring it along. ( a fact I shall be mercilessly reminding her of for the remainder of her natural life , haha. )
After the traditional picture the KDJ were going to jump up in front of the modern photo.

First shot : no good. Only Isla in the air.

Second one : lift-off !

Third one : another lift-off !

I kept the best bit for last :)
Before the group jump Hong did a try out jump , to see if my flash worked al right.
( in dark conditions, the autofocus fires off a number of low power flashes to set the focus , after which it flashes for real. By that time of course the jump is over, so I had to set it to manual focus ).

And there she goes ! Thank God there was a roof or we might have lost her :).

Visiting the Hyper Japan each year is an excellent excuse to go to London ( as if I need one ^^)
The event is getting more popular each year, so much so that it collapsed under it's own success this year.
The building was filled to capacity and to let more people in would be dangerous, so on the second day of my visit , I had to spend 3 hours in a queue waiting for people to leave , so we could get in.

Kanon Wakeshima , a popular J-Pop cellist , visited the show for a few short performances and a talkshow.

Kanon is heavily into Gothic Lolita ^^.

The show had a cosplay cafe this year , with different theme each day : the theme on Sunday was 'maid'. I visited it on Sunday for some small uebersweet pancakes and lots of free green tea with milk. The food wasn't to write home about and the less said about the service , the better :) but it was a lot of fun seeing everybody scurrying about in their outfits. No pictures allowed in the cafe itself, but they did come up on stage on Saturday in their maid costumes.

Here's the cafe's 'boss' Miyo about to explain their signature dance to everybody.

Pretty soon , the stage filled up and everybody joined in the fun : an officeworker with blue hair (?!), the plumber, a girl from the cafe, a hapless lorry driver who only came in to ask directions ( Ok I made that up : he had just made a delivery ) , 'boss' Miyo and the show presenter.

I would have joined in , but I was busy taking pictures. Too bad, a biker on stage in full gear would have really completed this lineup :)

Later that day, the dance group Hiroko Tanaka WAKAYAGI-RYU Nihon Buyo performed ( you can also see them on my Matsuri 2011 post, where the stage was so crowded I didn't get any decent pictures of the show :( , but I did get a few nice backstage shots of the fabulous kimonos they were wearing.
(I found a way to bypass the BLOG slideshow. Left-click on the pictures to see them in full size : it should open in a new window , where you can enlarge them to full size).
My apologies for the pictures where the feet are cut off : blame those horrible large speakers in the front of the stage.

As always , the dances and the music were wonderful and their kimonos were to die for ^^.
I wish I could have filmed it, but I took lots of pictures to make up for that.

This young man is performing the dance of the chrysanthemums , a flower so popular in Japan when it was introduced from China that it was made into the crest of the Japanese Emperor.