I was down in London yesterday for a day trip to attend the Japan Matsuri held at Trafalgar Square. I arrived just a little before 11AM and caught the tail end of the opening ceremony which included a few speeches (one of Japan’s former PMs, Yoshirō Mori, was one the guests in attendance). Interestingly, one of the speeches included a toast to the Japanese rugby squad who was to play South Africa later that afternoon. Little did everyone know what was in store later that afternoon, but I digress.
The square had a central stage and was flanked by rows of food stalls and merchant booths. Food was wide ranging, and included typical summer matsuri fare like yakisoba, takoyaki and kakigōri (shaved ice). There were booths from Japanese establishments based in the UK selling confectionery, like dorayaki and the more refined kasutera (castella). I think I had a total of three lunches and one appetiser. And matcha ice cream for dessert. The food stalls were doing very well as the queues were just getting ridiculously longer as the afternoon went on.
I was looking for artwork for the living room and there were some really expensive genuine 19th century moku-hanga woodblock prints that went for more than a hundred quid a piece. Actually, I didn’t minding spending a bit but as these are woodblock prints, they aren’t as big as I’d like them to be. I was also intrigued by this other stall that sold animation cells, like the real ones. Of course, a lot of them were from lesser known anime and for the better known ones, like those of Goku from Dragonball Z, they were like GBP400-ish. Ouch. I did get myself this – an animation sketch of Sakura from Naruto. The paper had a label from Studio Pierrot to boot! Another booth worth mentioning was that of JPU Records, a local Brit company that releases Japanese music CDs under license. SCANDAL’s HELLO WORLD and Greatest Hits CDs, as well as other bands like Okamoto’s and the GazettE, were available for a mere tenner. A bargain!
The performances were okay. Well, the ones I was paying attention to anyway. I enjoyed the singing comp most. There was an Indian chap who sang enka as it was his party piece at karaoke when he was working in Japan previously, and a young twenty-something British lass who sang some 80s idol song much to the surprise of the MC. However, the winner was this lass who sang the theme to Mononoke Hime beautifully. A well-deserved win.
It was an enjoyable day out and surprisingly I stayed around longer than I expected. I would have loved to be around when the results of the match had come out as it must’ve been a right atmosphere. I do hope my next Japan trip will be in the summer as I’d love to attend something like the Gion Matsuri in Kyōto or the like. But for now, I will look forward to the next one in 2016.
