Tasunke here, tonight was the ISU Japan club’s 4th Annual Japan Night/Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festival). Sakura Matsuri is written in Japanese as 桜祭 or　桜祭り. (If you got mojibake there instead of Japanese, you may need to install Japanese font support to be able to see Japanese characters properly.)

First was dinner, which included chicken, some kind of tofu dish, curried rice, rice balls, potato salad, apple and orange slices, inari-zushi and miso soup. The dinner was quite good.

Afterwords came the entertainment, starting with a taiko performance by ISU Taiko, which was quite enjoyable to watch. They practiced alot for their performance tonight, and I think they did an excellent job.

The ISU Judo club then had a fairly impressive demonstration, the likely highlight of which was near the end, when two small boys faced off against each other. First we saw the older one throwing the younger, but then they switched and the younger one, who looked to me to be half to three-quarters the size of the older one, started throwing him. That got a definite positive reaction out of the crowd.

After that was a Japanese traditional dance performance of Sooran Bushi, which if you’ve heard the song before, can get itself stuck in your head (at least it got stuck in mine). The choreography used for this performance was done by one of the performers on stage. (An example of a Sooran Bushi performance can be found here. I found several others, but each seems to have its own choreography.)

Next up was a Karate demonstration by the Gate City Dojo, a karate dojo in Pocatello. They showed off some impressive katas.

Last, but not least was a fashion show where they showed off a selection of both formal kimono and yukata, the lightweight cotton kimono, worn by both men and women. I forgot my camera, but I should be getting some pictures from a classmate next week, so I’ll try and post those when I have them and get a chance to post them. The kimono were beautiful.

I would encourage all of you that can to go to next year’s event. And I’ll endeavor to remember let people know about it in advance next year, too.