Japan Is Doomed

Sorry for the wait! It’s my fault as I’ve been pretty busy recently with choosing modules for my second year (more on that later) and also starting to think about which university I want to attend in my third year (more on that much later), and taking a mid semester exam. Anyway, last week we performed Soran Bushi for East Asian day just outside the union in broad daylight, making for some great photos. Photos were taken by Joseph (thank you!) and are available on Flickr here.

Pre-Soran

As we are a very drunken important and lazy professional dance team, we never do silly things like pose for group photographs or take silly photographs. Honestly. Did you really come to this site expecting to see that sort of thing?!

Only kidding! I guess this is our promotional photo, although a few members sadly couldn’t make it to this performance, so it’s not a perfect lineup. But it’s close! Here’s the lineup as we are standing in that shot;

Goto, Mo, Naomi, Simon
Taka, Amelia, Mike, Maria, Me

Following this very important photo, nonsense prevailed;

As you can see, Simon was not impressed by our antics, choosing instead to the professional “no-nonsense glance at camera” pose.

Alright kids, enough stalling, start dancing!

Soran Action Photos!

We did the dance twice and both times I think we did a great job. Unlike our earlier performance at the Culture show, we could hear the music from the start and everyone was a lot more confident. Sadly when we stamped on the ground this time there was no sound, but on the flipside people could stand all around us and it was quite exciting for everyone to be visible at all times. No more hiding on the back row getting the moves wrong for me!

As I said before there are many more photos available on Flickr here. Oh well, guess there’s nothing else to say…

HOLD IT!

Super Bonus Video Time!

Thanks to AJ for filming this one!

That really is it for this update! Stay tuned - I’ve got over the lull of posts and have a few more planned for the nearby future, and if that doesn’t work I’ve warmed up the excuse generator! See you then!

Wow! Last night at around 11pm myself and 11 other members of Sheffield Japan Society ran on stage at Sheffiend International Culture Evening 2008 and danced like maniacs. I don’t really know what to say, so I’ll post this video for you guys to enjoy.

Let the video load before playing it. Hosted courtesy of Facebook. Bonus points for spotting me.

Dancer Lineup;

Naomi, Kuni, Mo, Kishin, Simon, Masa, Mike, James, Maria, Amelia, Taka & Me

Best dance team ever.

Photographs will be here in a few days (courtesy of Joseph Tame)

Remember way back, when I posted those pictures of me looking like a bit of a total fool in my Shorinji kit? Or in a Yukata? Or a Kimono? Well, fan favourite “Mike doing weird stuff” is back with a whole new theme; traditional dancing!

This year’s annual International Culture Evening, held by the University Of Sheffield, will be on April 19th, and will be followed on the 20th by Japan Day. At both of these events I, along with a group of other scared individuals, will be performing a traditional fisherman’s dance from Hokkaido called Soran Bushi. (ソーラン節)

As we only just started to learn it, I can’t really provide any photographs or video evidence of how terrible amazing our dance troupe is yet, so instead I thought I’d provide you with two fun alternatives. The first is the song we will be dancing to:

Sorry, not available anymore :(

But wait, there’s more! The Japan Society did this dance two years ago and uploaded a video of it to Youtube! Enjoy!

I’ll try to take my camera to the next practice. If the other dancers will allow me to take photos (they won’t).