One of the things I love about summer in Japan is the local festivals. Actually, there are festivals all the year around, but summer festivals have a special feel about them and our local festival at Rakurakuen is one of my favourites. It is held on two consecutive Saturdays at the end of July every year.
This year we had been at Eileen-chan’s dress rehearsal for the next day’s ballet recital but got back in time to catch the tail-end of the festival and see some street dancing.
As I still had the camera I’d borrowed from Andy Lightfoot to take photos at Eileen’s ballet rehearsal I thought I should make use of it, but the SD card was almost full so I didn’t get many shots. Here’s one of some 3-5 year-olds getting ready to perform a street dance. I had to take this photo by holding the camera above the heads of the people in the front two rows, but the 200mm telephoto helped to get in a bit closer than I can usually manage with my bog-standard Nikon D40…
