Hallo
Ni Hao? How are you? I hope you are all well. I am home today after 3 funfilled days spent in Chinatown. Monday of course I saw the Lions doing there thing about town and on Tuesday afternoon I made my way to Yamashita Park to see what the "secret" prgram was about. Secret to me, as I can NOT read conji and so all I knew was the time and place.
I arrived to find many older chinese folks sitting on the park benches and under the red lantern decorated pagoda, waiting in the sunshine as Eric Clapton serended us in the background. The MC yelled out to the folks passing on the street to come in and see the show at 2pm. At least that is what I thought his charades meant. He did well, as by the time 2pm rolled around the park plaza was full of folks young and old ready to watch the show.
It was to be an acrobat show. Cool! The first guy out was masked and all dressed in black with a long cape holding a folding fan. Everytime he would flash his fan the mask would change colors. It was actually pretty amazing to me. He changed it about 5or 6 times and then made it disappear all together.
The second act was a guy in purple with a long whip who cracked it and tore a two page newspapre in half, then quaters, 8ths.... He then got a guy from the crowd and him out stretch his arms and hold two fake flowers. He then blindfoled himslef anf cracked the whip so to snap off the blossom at the end. It was fun to wtch the guys face as the whip snapped loudly in the air.
Then a pretty young lady dressed in bright Fushia came out and she freaked me out as she contorted her very slim and flexible body into some crazy ass positions. WOW!! I can't seem to figure out how they can do that and often have wondered if they have some bones removed or something? Does anyone know how they can move like that? She made me feel stiff as a board and very old just watching her.
Next another beautiful lady came out riding high above us on a unicycle with a bowl on top of her head. She then went on to put bowls on her 1 foot and while pedaling with the other foot she kicked and tossed the bowls into the other bowl on top od her head. She did 2 bowls at once, then 3 bowls at once , next a small cylinder into that and then a spoon into the narrow cup like cylinder. Pretty impressive and good "foot-head" coordination and balance I'd say.
When she was done the masked man and the contotionist gil came back oout and did some double acrobatics. He was so string and moved her up and about like she wass a feather. She stood on his head with 1 foot and then put more bowls on her head with her other foot. He also lifted her from sitting oin the ground to standing by holidign her with his one hand in hers and no other body parts touching. WOW what strength and balance.
The whip boy came back out for the finale and this he put a cylinder on top of a table and then place a board on top of that cylinder and then stood on it and rocked back and forth. While rolling on the board he roated all the way around in a circle. Then he added more cylinders till he was up to 5 stacked opposite one another and then got up on top of that and turned in a circle again. AS you can imagine it left many of us in the audience breathless.
They took a 1/2 hour break and did it all again. Of course I stayed and watched and this time I saw that they were human as wellas very talented young people.The guy had lots of trouble with his masks and the girls both dropped some of their bowls. But it was still a very fun and entertaing afternoon.
A nice older gentleman form some place north of here in Japan even tried to talk with me a bit before the 2nd show started and so that was nice to try and converse a bit with another human being. :-)
I then made my way back down the main street which was all lit now with the red paper lanterns lining the street glowing brightly above. Got home and had some soup to warm me up, as it got a bit cold when the sun went down. I too enjoyed looking at all the pics I got and to see what postions I was able to capture them in. CJ and I are going to have to have a slide show night one day so he can see all the things he is missing while at work each day. I know it's a toufgh job, but someone has to do it.
More tomorrow
Karla
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