Japan Trip 6: Bon Odori

When I was last in Japan in November, 2003, I noticed this store in Kamagaya, where we used to live. I wondered if Bon referred to Obon, the Japanese festival welcoming the dead back to their home towns by dancing. No, probably the French word for good.

Off shoes? Am I supposed to take them off? This is after all, Japan. No, I suspect the price has been diminished for the festival. Shoes for the dead indeed.

Bit loved dancing at the Bon Odori festival. Later in life, she loved shoes. Bringing her shoes back to dance with her fellow Kamagaya folk at the festival was the reason I came to Japan this summer. Otherwise, there is NO REASON AT ALL to be in Japan in the summer.

The dance pavillion features a drummer on the top and then a platform below where women who know what they're doing do the appropriate dance. Below the platform, the community dances.

Tomomi was the puppet master with Bit's shoes. The other kids may or may not have thought it odd that shoes were dancing with no one in them.